Radio reporter regains a voice with new technology
Journalist’s ordeal began in April 2016, while on a family trip to England
Two years ago, longtime radio reporter Jamie Dupree encountered what others in his profession might see as an insurmountable challenge: He lost his voice.
The 54-year-old veteran political newsman for Cox media found a workaround: He focused on text-based reporting and communicated with interview subjects through notecards. But being unable to speak was not just a problem in his profession — it affected every area of his life.
Now, with the help of technology, he can “speak” again. CereProc, a Scottish company that creates text-to-speech technology, has crafted a new voice for Dupree: software that turns his typed sentences into spoken words. Thanks to the tool, Dupree’s voice will be back on the air next week on radio stations in Atlanta; Orlando and Jacksonville, Florida; Dayton, Ohio; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The journalist’s ordeal began in April 2016, while on a family trip to England, he said in an interview.
“When I came home, it took a few weeks to get better, and during that time, my voice just went downhill,” he wrote.
His voice eventually diminished to a squeak before disappearing entirely, he said.
Normally, to create a voice, CereProc clients have to record themselves speaking, something impossible for Dupree. But he had years of audio recordings.
“We used his archived radio reports as the source material for the voice,” said Graham Leary, who used the recordings to build Dupree’s digital voice for CereProc.