As a journalist, everyone is asking me about the best tools to use on my work. Since journalists are always on-the-go, they are looking for the most optimal ways to get their job done. Personally, I have tried more tools than I can count. But some of them are really good. I definitely want to share some of the best digital journalism tools with you so you can start working smarter, not harder.
In this review, you will find the best writing tools for journalist.
Maestra – Audio to Text Transcription Software
Maestra Introduction
Maestra is an automatic audio & video transcription software tool that can generate text from audio & video files in 50+ languages.
If you have a video or audio file that you need to transcribe or caption, Maestra can do it for you within minutes. Maestra is not only helpful for journalists but also for caption generation & adding subtitles.
No-one has time to spend all day listening to the same interview. In such situations, Maestra can come as a very efficient tool in need of every journalist or PR writer.
How Maestra helps Journalists and Writers
Transcribing is a process of converting a video or audio file into text. This is mostly done by journalists to get text quotes from a recorded interview. Transcription of an audio or video is the most time consuming and hectic process of journalism writing. But with the help of Maestra, you can transcribe video & audio files within minutes.
How it works
Maestra is an AI-controlled software tool that has installed knowledge of 50+ languages, like Spanish, Dutch, French, and English, etc.
The process of transcribing, subtitling, or giving a voiceover to a video or audio in Maestra is elementary. Whichever video or audio you wish to transcribe, simply upload it to Maestra. Maestra’s AI system will recognize the original language and convert or transcribe the video to the particular language that you need.
After the transcription is done successfully, Maestra will help you to proofread the text it has converted with its advanced text editor, which you can download into any format, like PDF, doc, etc.
Link: https://maestrasuite.com/
Authory – All-In-One Solution
Authory Introduction
Authory is an effective tool that helps you take control of your articles and build your own Audience regardless of where you publish it. It works like any online diary where writers can find all their creations in one place and track every article’s growth and stability.
Authory is a one of a kind tool, which every writer and journalist should use at least once. Even though, Authory provides a 14 days free trial, you can still subscribe to it for $8 monthly and enjoy its many other amazing features.
How Authory helps Journalists and Writers
Many articles or write-ups that are created get lost or are not published due to some reasons. Authory helps you backup your the articles you create in a systematic order.
This tool also helps you know how your article performs on various social media platforms. With the help of Authory, you can create your own portfolio for future opportunities and tie-ups. Authory is a perfect platform especially for freelance writers or journalists to keep their written work in one place and know its progress.
How it works
For a writer, every creation of theirs is worth once a read. That is why he/she saves every article but in time forgets to publish or goes untraceable. Authory saves your every article regardless of published or unpublished. This way you can find your articles in one place. Authory is not a publishing platform but does connect you with other platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc to publish your work and track its status. This way you can know which platform is more appreciating of your articles.
Link: https://authory.com/
Squibler
Best for authors and writers who want to write books with compelling prose, outline, and publish books.
Squibler provides an intuitive writing tool to satiate the creative geniuses of the story-telling world. It perhaps acts best as a productive hack that helps writers of novels and other books to write and produce content faster. Its ‘Note Cards’ feature allows writers to split their display screen, organize their work, and check its progress by creating note cards.
Writers can also store and filter their written material with the help of tags. It provides a convenient drag and drops feature to put elements in their respective places and create a clear-cut narrative structure to your prose. The books you create on Squibler can be easily shared with editors when you are done working on them.
Features:
- Drag and Drop editor
- Content management
- Notecards to track progress
- Tags to store and filter content
Verdict: Squibler is a great creative writing app, which works phenomenally to create and produce content faster for screenplay writers, authors, and other forms of fiction writers. If you have a story to tell, then you might want to use Squibler to help you tell it to the world.
Price: 30-day free trial, then billed at $9.99/month
Website: Squibler
Grammarly – Automated Grammar Checker
Grammarly Introduction
Grammarly is a highly used and preferred tool, which helps you make your write up grammatically error-free within minutes. Not only is your written work is grammar right but Grammarly also helps you make it look more sophisticated and professional.
This amazing tool can be very helpful for initial journalists and writers to create a good impression. The Grammarly tool is free but with certain limitations. You can only use ¼ of what it has in the free option. Its paid might sound costly but that’s because it is worth spending and globally accepted. $11.66 monthly is the least paid amount for Grammarly with lots of exciting features and promising results.
How Grammarly helps Journalists and Writers
Grammar is the most concerning thing when it comes to writing. It is known as the firm base of any language in which misbehaving can change the entire context of the sentence.
Grammarly is a perfectly designed tool that is capable enough to provide you with errorless grammar in your article. Although, Grammarly can only cure articles written in English. Any other language is unknown to its system. From spelling to punctuations, Grammarly can make your written grammar right and easy to read.
How it works
What makes this tool a trustable companion for writing is that one can attach it with his / her Gmail account. Creating an account can provide you with free Grammarly services. Post an article in Grammarly and wait for its AI system to configure the article. Once scanned, Grammarly discloses your grammatical mistakes and gives you the right grammar option to choose. This process goes word by word. Once done, you can keep it somewhere else. A copy of your content will be automatically saved in Grammarly.
Link: https://app.grammarly.com/
Scrivener
Best for long-form writers and novelists.
None of the lists for the writing app is complete without the mention of Scrivener, which is a widely renowned tool among novelists. Scrivener provides its users with a tool that is both comprehensive and sophisticated in its structure. It allows writers to choose a template that best fits the nature of their written content. Templates for essays, screenplays, or novels are all readily available on the tool.
The left-hand sidebar displays sections like notecards and other elements that can come in handy in your writing. You also get to track the progress of your content while creating material such as front and back matter to personalize your work.
Features:
- Outline and Publish long-form written content
- A wide gallery of templates for writing
- Notecards
- Track progress of content and research
Verdict: Scrivener masquerades as a great writing app that was designed to cater to novelists and other such creators of long-form content. Its affordable price and sophisticated features make it a must-try tool for creative writers.
Price: 30 Days free trial, $45 license fee.
Website: Scrivener
Ulysses
Best for productive formatting of written content.
Ulysses is a standard writing app that has so much in common with Scrivener. It is designed to make the formatting of your work easier. It offers several informative tutorials alongside its pragmatic features.
It uses the ‘Markdown’ approach in the formatting of content, thus helping writers maintain the flow of their prose while writing. It offers all of the standard features you’ve come to expect from tools like this to organize your written content effectively. The one thing that might bother users of this tool is its reluctance to appear outline friendly to its writers.
Features:
- Organize content with Keyword labels
- Intuitive sidebar to display your work
- Split view
- Track progress of content
Verdict: Ulysses is a great app if formatting is the only thing you seek from an app. It is a fairly standard writing app that allows writers with a focused writing experience at a reasonably charged cost.
Price: $4.99/month, $39.99/year
Website: Ulysses
Evernote Web
Best for organizing and creating written content of all sorts.
Evernote is perhaps the best free writing app when it comes to catering to all kinds of multitalented writers. Its interface is home to oodles of creative templates that facilitate the creation of content like essays, novels, and simple classroom note-taking.
All of the templates we have mentioned above are available to writers for free. Apart from the templates, writers get to collaborate on writing projects with other users, chat with them, and even tag their content in specific categories. Its web clipper feature is its most appealing selling point, allowing users to save any excerpt from the web they might come across.
Features:
- Wide gallery of writing templates
- Collaborate with other users
- Chatbox to converse with other users
- Categorize content with tags
- Web clipper to save excerpts from the web
Verdict: Evernote is a great app to save both time and money and caters to all sorts of writers, whether they are bloggers or novelists. We highly recommend you try the tool for its sleek interface and pragmatic features.
Price: Free basic plan, $4.99/month premium plan.
Website: Evernote
Buzzsumo – Content Research Platform
Buzzsumo Introduction
Buzzsumo is an amazing tool that can help writers come up with catchy headlines related to a particular topic. Buzzsumo generates thousands of relevant keywords and provides infinite content ideas.
This tool also provides you with content research that can help you create content that people mostly prefer to read. You can also monitor your content’s ups & downs with the help of Buzzsumo and make decisions based on that. Buzzsumo provides a 7 days free trial but due to its popularity and demand, it puts a hole in the pocket. $99 monthly for Buzzsumo’s basic features are enough for a writer to fulfill his / her need from it. But if you wish to enroll for a longer and better time, can invest as per their plans.
How Buzzsumo helps Journalists and Writers
This happens a lot, we have a topic in mind but can’t think of a proper headline. Buzzsumo helps you get better ideas by showcasing various articles and blogs related to keyword research.
It is an easy way to know which kind of articles and blogs works on the Internet and which does not. Here you learn from other’s mistakes and get creative ideas for content as well as headlines with ease.
How it works
Buzzsumo works on a basic algorithm of keyword research, tracking, and statistics. If you have a topic in mind, search for a keyword-relevant to it on Buzzsumo and you can find numerous content related to that topic. You can go through the content and its progress and decide whether this topic brings you any credibility or not. This search can also provide you with unique ideas for your content and its headline.
Link: https://buzzsumo.com/
Microsoft Word
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Who hasn’t heard or tried this writing app for Windows in their lifetime? You have to be living under a rock to not have heard of Microsoft Word. Despite new writing apps in the market, MS Word has maintained its place with constant updates and advanced features pertaining to changing times.
An integral part of Microsoft Office, most users have known no other way to write on Windows except MS Word.
It is very simple to use, allows users with an exhaustive list of features that include convenient formatting pertaining to font size, style and color, easy alignment of pages, convenient bifurcation of content with headers, footers, page, and section breaks, use many clip arts, word art, and colors to make your work stand out, find and replace and a ton of other features that make it a mandatory tool to have for any writer.
Features:
- Basic Grammar and Spelling check
- Formatting and Font adjustments
- Insert an image, table, clip arts, stat, and graphical figures
- Find and Replace the word
- Bifurcate content according to headers, footers, page, and section breaks
- Highlight content
- Align content according to preference.
Verdict: MS Word has been around since what seems like forever. It has taken advantage of the changes in technology to remain relevant and is still the go-to choice as a legendary writing app.
Price: It comes included in the Microsoft Office app, Free trial for 30 days is available. Billed at $99.99/year for a family plan, $69.99/year for the personal plan, and $149.99 for student plan.
Website: MS Word
iA Writer
Best for writers who prefer simplicity in their writing tools.
iA Writer’s minimalistic design and easy to use interface are designed keeping only one salient goal in mind, a tool simply made to write. It also uses the Markdown formatting method that Ulysses employs, however, iA Writer is a much simpler tool to use than Ulysses.
Its major feature includes an upper hand toolbar that facilitates the highlighting of speech like nouns, adverbs, adjectives, etc. However, its purpose is singular, i.e. to offer writers with a tool that provides distraction-free writing experience impervious to clutters.
Features:
- Clean interface
- Markdown formatting
- Dark mode to highlight speech
Verdict: iA Writer is meant for those writers who aren’t technically sound and simply want a tool that will allow them to write without any distractive features according to their own skills. There isn’t much more to the tool.
Price: Free 14 day trial, buy-in $29.99 for Mac, $19.99 for Windows.
Website: iA Writer
Conclusion
There are a lot of different things vying for journalists’ time these days — and if you’re not writing content for a living, it may be difficult to understand the stresses and challenges they face. Tools such as social media can help journalists in their minute-to-minute lives, but don’t forget the long term tools, too.