Get The News From Alexa Like A Pro
Whether it’s sports, markets, celebrity gossip or political news, we all need our daily news fix (or maybe a few of them). Alexa makes it easy to get news updates just by asking.
Listening to the news on your Echo speaker is one of the best uses for Alexa right now. In fact, according to a 2018 Adobe survey, 46% of voice assistant users ask their smart speakers for the news.
In this post, you’ll learn the best way to get the news from the sources you prefer — whether that’s a bite-sized update, a podcast or radio show.
Tap/scroll to see how to get your news from…
5 ways to make Alexa your personal newscaster
#1. Get 2-3 minute news updates with an Alexa flash briefing
An Alexa flash briefing is a 2-3 minute compact news update — and they’re available from almost every news outlet you can think of. They are perfect for when you want something fast.
Here’s how flash briefings work… when you say “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?” Alexa plays the flash briefings you’ve added to your personal flash briefing list one after the other. Add just 1 or however many you’d like!
Available Content
You can choose from close to 10,000 different flash briefings in the Alexa app. That’s a lot of options! So chances are your favorite news sources have flash briefings that you can easily add to your personal flash briefing list.
Set-up (1 minute or less)
To add flash briefings to your personal list, follow these easy steps:
- Open your Alexa app
- Tap the hamburger icon in the upper left corner
- Tap Settings
- Scroll down to tap Flash Briefing
- Tap Add Content
- Select a flash briefing or search for one by tapping the magnifying glass in the upper right corner
- Tap Enable To Use
- Repeat steps 6 and 7 for as many flash briefings as you’d like!
How?
Listen. To listen to the flash briefings you added to your list, just say “Alexa, play my flash briefing” or “Alexa, turn on the news.” So if you added Today’s Forecast and Reuters as your flash briefings, you’d hear the day’s 2-3 minute Today’s Forecast flash briefing directly followed by the Reuters flash briefing.
Skip ahead. To skip to the next flash briefing in your list (say you don’t need to hear the weather from Today’s Forecast this morning and want to go straight to Reuters), just say “Alexa, next.”
Pause & come back. To pause your flash briefing, just say “Alexa, stop.” If you want to come back and listen to your flash briefing later, Alexa will automatically drop you into the flash briefing you left off on.
Pro Tips
Pro Tip #1: Create an Alexa routine that will provide your news flash briefing, weather and traffic updates when you say “Alexa, good morning.”
Pro Tip #2: You can easily remove a flash briefing from your list. Open the main Flash Briefing tab in the Alexa app by following set-up steps 1 – 4. Then, adjust the toggle next to the flash briefing you want to remove to the off position.
Pro Tip #3: You can also change the order of your flash briefings — for example, say you want to hear your Reuters flash briefing before your Today’s Forecast briefing every morning. Just follow the steps below:
- Open the main Flash Briefing tab in the Alexa app by following set-up steps 1 – 4
- Tap Edit in the upper right corner
- To move a briefing up or down on your list, tap and hold the two horizontal lines icon to the right of the flash briefing name, drag up or down and drop at your preferred location in your list
- Tap Done once you have ordered the flash briefings the way you’d like!
Pro Tip #4: If you have an Alexa Echo Show and want to explore flash briefings that include video as well, follow set-up steps 1 – 5 then check out the “Enhanced with Video” section at the top.
#2. Now you can listen to long-form news updates too (new feature!)
As of a few weeks ago, you can listen to long-form news coverage from Alexa in addition to shorter flash briefings. A long form update from Newsy, for example, contains a collection of Newsy stories for the day played one after the other. Collectively, these stories can run up to an hour or more (length differs depending on the volume of news).
What’s great about long-form news updates on Alexa is that you can easily skip to the next story. So unlike watching the morning news on TV where you have to wait for one story to end to get to the next one, with Alexa long-form news updates you can listen to the news stories you find interesting and quickly move past the others.
Available Content
There are currently 6 news sources participating in long-form news updates (but I expect more to come online soon!):
- Bloomberg
- NPR
- CNN
- Fox News
- Newsy
- CNBC
Set-up: None!
How?
Listen. “Alexa, play news from Bloomberg” (insert any of the 6 news sources above in place of Bloomberg) to launch an in-depth news update curated by the source of your choice.
Skip ahead. Say you’re listening to Bloomberg’s long-form update and you want to skip to the next Bloomberg segment in the update. Just say “Alexa, skip!” or “Alexa, next!” to move to the next story from Bloomberg.
Stop & come back. You can stop the update with an “Alexa, stop” and come back a minute later to listen by saying “Alexa, play.” But if you try to come back later in the day after Alexa has done a bunch of other stuff for you, Alexa will drop you in at the beginning of the long-form update (not at the story where you left off, so you’ll have to skip ahead to where you were with “Alexa, skip”).
Pro Tip
If you have an Alexa Echo Show, your long-form updates from Newsy, CNBC and CNN will also contain video.
#3. Turn on your favorite podcast
If you’re home, why not let Alexa play your podcast instead of listening to it on headphones?
Set-up (1 minute)
Option 1 (recommended): For the best podcast listening experience, enable the AnyPod skill to listen to your podcasts instead of using the default podcast skill. Click this link and tap the Enable button. When prompted, link your Amazon account (I’ll explain why later). I recommend AnyPod because it lets you:
- Subscribe to podcasts by adding to your personal library
- Play specific episodes
- Jump to a particular time
- Play your podcast on mobile and desktop devices synced to your Alexa device (so it can pick up where you left off)
- Easily use Alexa voice commands to control your podcast listening
Option 2: To play podcasts via the default TuneIn Alexa skill, no set-up required. The functionality is more limited than AnyPod, and to play anything other than the most recent episode of a podcast you’ll need to go to the Alexa app on your phone.
Available Content
Alexa can access just about any podcast and play it over your Echo speaker. You can search for your favorite podcast in AnyPod’s library.
How?
Listen. “Alexa, ask AnyPod to play the Fresh Air podcast” (insert podcast of your choice!).
Stop & come back. “Alexa, stop” will pause a podcast, and AnyPod keeps track of where you left off. So if you’re listening to the latest episode of Fresh Air and then go out for a run, when you come back and ask AnyPod to play Fresh Air it will drop you in right where you left off.
Switch episodes.
- “Alexa, next” or “Alexa, previous” to move to the next or previous episode
- “Alexa, ask AnyPod for the newest [or oldest] episode.”
- “Alexa, ask AnyPod to play Serial season 2, episode 6” if you know the episode you want to listen to
Fast forward & rewind.
- “Alexa, ask AnyPod to fast forward 2 minutes” (or however many seconds or minutes you’d like!)
- “Alexa, ask AnyPod to rewind 30 seconds”
- You can also say “Alexa, ask AnyPod to restart”
Subscribe.
- “Alexa, ask AnyPod to subscribe to the Fresh Air podcast”
- “Alexa, ask AnyPod what my subscriptions are.”
- Alexa, next” when you are playing a podcast you subscribe to on AnyPod will play the next podcast in your subscription list (not the next episode of the podcast you’re listening to)
Pro Tips
Pro Tip #1: If AnyPod has trouble understanding you, just say “Alexa, open AnyPod” then when prompted say the podcast you want to listen to. If the podcast you want to listen to has a long name like “Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin,” just try saying part of the name in your Alexa command (e.g.,“Alexa, ask AnyPod to play Alec Baldwin”).
Pro Tip #2: Listen to AnyPod on your smartphone or desktop computer. Just log in with your Amazon account (the same account you used during set-up). Your podcasts will all be synced so you can pick up where you left off.
Pro Tip #3: I usually listen to my podcasts at 1.25x or 1.5x speed from my phone, and I was disappointed to learn that Alexa can’t speed up podcasts from 1x speed. So if you want to play podcasts at a faster speed over your Echo speaker, you’ll need to play the podcast through your phone and use your Echo as a bluetooth speaker.
Pro Tip #4: You can play podcasts as part of a routine, but you can only do it via TuneIn. Here’s how… when you set up your Alexa routine and are adding your actions, select Music > type name of the podcast in the “Song, Artist or Playlist” field > select TuneIn as the provider.
#4. Tune into the radio station of your choice
Your Echo speaker can be your radio too!
Available Content
You should be able to access practically any radio station in the world.
How?
There’s a good chance that Alexa will be able to play the station you want to listen to without any set-up. Try saying “Alexa, play Z100” (insert name of your favorite station).
If that doesn’t work, try playing it via the myTuner Radio Alexa skill — it will give you access to over 50,000 free radio stations from over 200 countries. Just say “Alexa, ask myTuner Radio to play [insert name of your favorite station]” and “Alexa, stop” to turn the radio off.
Enable the myTuner Radio skill by following the set-up instructions below.
Set-up To Use myTuner Radio (30 seconds or less)
To enable the myTuner Radio Alexa skill, tap/click here and tap/click the Enable button. You can also follow the below steps…
- Open your Alexa app
- Tap the hamburger icon in the upper left corner
- Tap Skills & Games
- Tap the magnifying glass in the upper right corner
- Type “myTuner Radio” in the search field and tap the Search button the keyboard
- Tap myTuner Radio from the results
- Tap the Enable To Use button
Pro Tip
If you have an iHeart Radio account, be sure to link it in Alexa Settings.
#5. Sports!
It’s easy to get the latest news and scores for your favorite sports teams… but first, you have to tell Alexa who they are!
Set-up (30 seconds or less)
Here’s how to set your favorite sports teams:
- Open your Alexa app
- Tap the hamburger icon in the upper left corner
- Tap Settings
- Scroll down to tap Sports
- Tap Add a Team
- Search for your team. Select it and tap Save in the upper right corner to add it
- Repeat step 6 for as many teams as you’d like
How?
“Alexa, what’s my sports update?”
Pro Tip
You can also listen to ESPN radio by saying “Alexa, play ESPN radio.” And if ESPN is not your jam, you can access most any other sports podcast or radio station!
A few more pro tips…
Pro Tip #1: To turn off any of these news updates, just say “Alexa, stop.”
Pro Tip #2: To adjust the volume, just say “Alexa, turn down [or up] the volume.” You can also set the volume between 1 (lowest) and 10 (highest) by saying “Alexa, set the volume to 4.” (I usually find that 4 or 5 is the right volume for me.)
See Also
VoiceBrew 22: The 22 Best Uses for Alexa Today
Easily Set Up An Alexa Routine — A Comprehensive Guide
8 Alexa Settings That Will Seriously Upgrade Your Alexa Experience