Tamedia saves 3–4 hours per interview with Happy Scribe’s AI transcription
Tamedia, part of TX Group, is Switzerland’s largest private media company and has shaped the media landscape since 1893. With 600 journalists producing content across Swiss-German and Swiss-French regions, and an impressive 45 million platform visitors on average every month, the company needed a fast, reliable, and scalable transcription solution—especially for Swiss German interviews, which had historically been difficult to transcribe with AI.
The must-haves: Accuracy, security, and flexible pricing based on usage
Tamedia’s journalists work under tight deadlines, so transcription needed to be fast, accurate, and easy to use. Their key requirements were:
- Swiss German transcription accuracy: A critical need, as most of their interviews are conducted in Swiss German, the primary language of 75% of the Swiss population.
- Enterprise security: SSO login integration was also very important in order to make user management easy.
- A flexible pay-per-active-user pricing that was cost-effective and ensured Tamedia paid only for what they used.
Ticking all the boxes
Happy Scribe proved to be the ideal solution for Tamedia’s needs, offering excellent Swiss German transcription accuracy.
Previously, achieving high accuracy from Swiss German spoken language to German transcriptions was a challenge. The newsroom initially tested various transcription providers, but none met their requirements. A major turning point came when OpenAI’s Whisper model—used by Happy Scribe—dramatically improved Swiss German transcription quality.
"The quality is now very good with Happy Scribe, so adoption happened organically — journalists recommended it to their colleagues, and now it’s a standard tool in the newsroom."
Beyond accuracy, Happy Scribe provided two additional key advantages:
On the one hand, the SSO login integration, with Okta, ensured journalists could securely log in, while IT teams effortlessly managed user access and permissions.
“You can choose to keep the file for yourself or share it with colleagues, just as you would with a Google Doc. This combination of privacy and ease of sharing is definitely one of Happy Scribe’s strengths.”
On the other hand, the pay-per-active-user pricing. Unlike competitors, Happy Scribe’s flexible pricing model allows it to pay only for active users, making it a cost-effective solution for Tamedia’s journalists, who transcribe interviews at varying frequencies.
"We needed a pricing model that worked for journalists who might transcribe multiple interviews one month and none the next. Paying only for active users was the perfect solution."
How Tamedia's journalists use Happy Scribe
Journalists typically record interviews on their smartphones, whether in controlled environments like offices or in noisy public spaces. They then upload audio files to Happy Scribe, generating transcripts in minutes.
Thus, some popular features within the newsroom include:
- Click-to-listen functionality: Journalists can instantly replay key moments by clicking on words in the transcript.
- Integrated translation: Allowing Swiss German-to-French and other language translations.
Before using Happy Scribe, journalists manually transcribed interviews—taking between three or four hours per hour of audio. Now, transcription happens in minutes, allowing them to focus on writing and analysis instead of typing. The journalists can focus their attention on the interview editing process rather than spending hours on transcribing.
"If you did a whole manual transcription, you needed between three and four hours to do it, and now it's done within a few minutes. So you save time, definitely."
He emphasizes how essential the tool has become:
"It would be ridiculous not to use this tool—just like not using a spellchecker."
Results in a nutshell:
- 3–4 hours saved per interview – Transcription now takes minutes instead of hours.
- About 100 active users per month on average (over 600 journalists) – Paying only for what they use, thanks to Happy Scribe’s flexible pricing.
- Zero training needed – Journalists used Happy Scribe instantly, thanks to its intuitive interface.
Cristina G
Cristina G is a former journalist who transitioned into PR and Communications before diving into growth marketing and ultimately product marketing. She loves learning and writing about how HappyScribe customers use the product to achieve their goals.