By Blaney Dreifurst
Nebraska News Service
A University of Nebraska-Lincoln journalism student has created a new communication tool for the college’s statewide wire service.
Nathan Bacon is a part of the Nebraska News Service internship program this summer through the College of Journalism and Mass Communications.
As part of his work this summer, he created a skill for Amazon smart speakers, which allows people with those smart speakers to add Nebraska News Service news to daily flash briefings.
Bacon started the process by going through a developing stage with Amazon. He taught himself how to complete the steps required by Amazon.
“It was actually a lot easier than I thought it was going to be,” Bacon said.
After the developing stage was complete, Bacon published the flash briefing on Anchor.fm, which synchronizes a couple hours later.
Bacon is now focused on creating flash briefings.
“I was just excited to put out the briefings because audio editing is something I really like to do,” Bacon said.
Bacon updates the flash briefing most days, excluding the weekends. Each briefing is 2 to 3 minutes long.
Bacon includes a mix of sports and news stories published on the Nebraska News Service website. He spends roughly four hours recording a flash briefing.
Bacon, a UNL senior, is one of 47 interns that the College of Journalism and Mass Communications hired this summer. The program, which is supported by donor funding, was created out of concern for CoJMC students who lost summer internships because of COVID-19 disruptions.
The interns are working for several divisions including Nebraska News Service, UNLimited Sports, Roper Lab for Data in Community Journalism and Jacht, a student advertising agency. News reporting work is published at nebraskanewsservice.net and sent to more than 100 Nebraska news organizations that subscribe to Nebraska News Service.
To add the Nebraska News Service to your Amazon flash briefing, follow these steps:
1. Go to alexa.amazon.com
2. Click on Skills
3. Search for and enable the Nebraska News Service skill
4. Click on Settings.
5. Under Alexa Preferences, click on Flash Briefing. Here you can reorder your flash briefings skills.
