Say What? A Non-Scientific Comparison of Automated Transcription Services

For as long as it’s been possible to record interviews with sources, journalists have had to grapple with the decision about whether to transcribe this material, and if so how much. Reporters with abundant financial or institutional resources could hire another human being to type out the interviews, using one of many independent companies that offer human-based transcription services. But the rest had to do it themselves. Now a bevy of transcription services have emerged online that process audio automatically.