I think it would be really interesting if people were able to attach short (i.e. 30s or thereabouts) MP3s to news items, which could then get farmed into a podcast. For example, someone who is present at the location of a event, or someone who is an authority on the topic.
Essentially it would be an add-on to 'have your say', but with the added benefit of being customizable into a personal newscast.
I think some form of human moderation would definitely be necessary initially, but there are technologies out which do a pretty good job of transcription. For example, Podscope (www.podscope.com) is a relatively new site which can search within podcasts, and while it's occasionally a bit unreliable (e.g. confusing 'panda' with 'and, er') it produces accurate results in many cases.
As well as language you've also got to check the content (for incorrect facts, etc) so there's still the need for human interaction - but I imagine there's already a process for that with 'Have your say'?
Yes, but by the same token who is going to listen to all this stuff in real time. If you attach a reputation system to this then it will be doable. I can see this being extremely useful in the education world cf http://mod.blogs.com/art_mobs/
on a similar theme to Mike I alsways thought it would be good to get a podcast of a 30 min news bulletin downloaded as I got up which I could listen to on the way to work. Never get the time at home with all the kids running around!
Great idea, and a way to further develop themes and knowldege. 'Have your say' boards can auto check for keywords e.g. 'beep', but not speach so you may find liability and validity of contribution an issue with the need for some human review of content.