New Tribune mobile app creates 'playlists' of streaming audio news

By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A new smartphone app developed by the Tribune Co will read aloud a personalized "playlist" of news articles along with weather and traffic updates, as the media organization looks for new ways to reach consumers. The free Newsbeat app released on Thursday is the first product developed by the year-old Tribune Digital Ventures group headed by former Yahoo Inc executive Shashi Seth. The app uses text-to-speech technology and recordings of humans reading news articles to produce a daily catalog of roughly 7,000 articles about everything from world news to sports. Similar to the way digital music streaming services such as Pandora Media Inc operate, the Newsbeat app determines the stories most relevant for different users based on their preferences and habits.



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