Lasting between four and five minutes, the briefings will be available twice a week to begin with and increase to a daily bulletin in the new year.
It features local, regional and international news and sport, and weather.
The audio briefings can be accessed via the PT website - www.denipt.com.au - or our Deni PT mobile app. Just look for the headphones symbol at the top of the screen.
How we make the audio bulletin is almost as interesting as the bulletin itself.
Our staff select the news from everything we’ve published online, we use AI tools to format it into an audio script, and use two synthetic voices to record the bulletin.
Our content manager then steps in to check it prior to release.
It has been in the trial stage for the past two months and, like all things AI, it’s not without the occasional glitch — for example, getting the pronunciation right for some of our tricky local town names.
That’s why we always keep a human involved.
Alongside our new bi-weekly newsletters, the audio bulletin is a great addition to the Deniliquin Pastoral Times stable, ensuring we can provide our community with news and information in the formats they prefer.
We aim to be at the forefront of using AI to help our writers create better, unique local journalism within safe guidelines.
We use AI tools to check spelling, grammar and headlines, create drafts, access our archives, and to stay abreast of what’s happening in the online world so we don’t miss a thing, so you don’t miss a thing.
We are also well advanced in using AI to produce our printed newspaper as efficiently as possible.
For example, more than 90 per cent of our pages are now laid out and produced with AI from our human-created design templates.
We’re embracing the best of AI while carefully managing its risks, and we're excited about the opportunities it brings to help us improve how we report on our incredible local communities.
If you haven’t already, please download the Deni PT mobile app today and try the daily audio bulletin.
We’d love to hear your feedback.
Regards
Christine Anderson
Director, Content and Audience
McPherson Media Group
christine.anderson@mmg.com.au
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