Evan Milberg: Comm 361

This chapter focuses on mobile journalism. Specifically the kinds of stories you can effectively publish with mobile reporting, the equipment needed for medium, and how news organizations use mobile to augment the platforms they already use.

What is Mobile Journalism?

With technology growing, people are becoming increasingly tech savvy. Mobile technology and computer technology overlap, with many people accessing the internet from their mobile phones. Phones are sophisticated enough now to let you surf the Web, and update your own personal Web 2.0 applications from there as well.

This growing technology allows for news organizations to start catering their stories for mobile devices. Since audiences are “going mobile,” news organizations must follow suit. This does not mean that mobile journalism replaces in-depth reporting or detract from the accuracy or compelling nature of journalism, it just means that there is a new outlet for news organizations to use as an add-on to what they already do.

Creating a Story for the Medium

Not only are audiences easier to reach with mobile journalism, but the stories themselves are becoming easier to cover on location with the growth of reporting technology.

When it comes to choosing equipment, there are a wide array of options. Between laptops, smartphones, video cameras, and live stream broadcasting, as long as you can connect to the Internet, you’re in business. However, when on location, bring only as much equipment as you need.

When deciding what your story should be for a particular location, consider whether the audience benefits from you’re taking them and if the reporting can be brief and easily summarized. This is particularly important for breaking news.

There are two ends of the eqiupment spectrum: the gearheads and the light packers. Gearheads comes fully equipped with a laptop, internet connect, a USB to hook up microphones, camera phones and digital phones, a tripod for a regular camera, and devices to record audio. Light packers can combine many of these things by packing smartphones. Smartphones come equipped with a full keyboard, a camera, and full internet capabilities.

The growth of mobile devices allow for more diversified options for publishing as well. Some may combine mobile technology with microblogging platforms like Twitter. Journalists can now kill two birds with one stone through mobile microblogging, making stories accessible through a computer or a phone. This can overlap with live blogging, with constant updates covering a particular story. Some notable live blogging services are CoveritLive and TechChrunch.

If you want an even more interactive approach, you can report live video stream to mobile devices as well. The benefit of services like Qik, Kyte, and Flixwagon is that you can use your mobile network to connect to live video without an Internet connection. However, these services only work for phones that can shoot video.

This interactivity is becoming the future of journalism. With this new technology you can share audience feedback from Twitter on your Web site and even create an RSS feed from it. Mobile journalism allows you to include your audience in your coverage of a story, and it them interested, which is the ultimate goal, right?