Technology and Journalism

All of the technologies that journalism has embraced since the telegraph have reflected the twin desires for speed and increased efficiencies (Quinn, 2008). The history of journalists’ use of news gathering technologies illustrates this point: tools like long-distance telephone, the satellite phone and portable electronic news gathering kits used in Afghanistan and Iraq, are all examples of this evolution. Journalists and the news making process continue to adapt to the continuous emergence of new technology and its capabilities making the life in a newsroom today more technologically complex (Boczkowski, 2005). Today, the job of a journalist now involves the use of multiple tools to produce multiple types of content on more platforms. The most cited example of this new idea was the Tampa Tribune’s “temple of convergence,” a $40 million product that Media General built to combine the newsrooms of the Tampa Tribune, the NBC-Affiliate WFLA-TV and a cluster of Websites under the TBO.com (Tampa Bay Online) umbrella.  This shift focused heavily on “multimedia reporting,” ensuring that journalists significantly changed their work practices to accommodate each outlet ranging from newspaper reporters doing TV standups, to the multimedia editors acting as the liaison between WFLA-TV, the Tribune, and TBO.com. The converged newsroom appealed to many media managers, however the overall reality was underwhelming. As stated by Ulrik Haagerup (2002), an award-winning newspaper journalist from Denmark, convergence “is like teenage sex, everyone thinks everybody is doing, but the few who are doing it aren’t very good at it.

History has shown that journalists adopt new technologies for newsgathering if the tools are easy to use and accelerate newsgathering (Quinn, 2009).  While mobile journalism may be easy to use there are potential consequences that go with adopting mobile devices as a way to gather news. Rogers (1995) defines a consequence as the changes that occur to an individual or a social system as a result of the adoption or rejection of an innovation. Journalism, as a practice, a product, and a profession is undergoing rapid and dramatic structural change (Singer, 2010). The line between the journalist and the audience is more blurred than ever; audiences are now contributing to the content produced and play an integral role in the newsgathering process, however this creates an infringement on journalistic boundaries (Lewis, 2012).  News decision judgment conveys status and authority which the audience should not have that kind of power; accepting the idea of mobile journalism in the newsroom could denounce journalist’s authority and status.  The boundaries between a journalist and the public is not only in the practice, but in the professional indicators in the field, such as the expensive camera gear used in newsrooms versus the inexpensive camera on a mobile device that can be accessed by anyone. The question is what will these boundaries look like if journalists were to use mobile phones for news reporting.

References:

Boczkowski, P. (2005). Digitizing the news: Innovation in online newspapers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Haaagerup, U. (2002). "Convergence and the Newsroom Culture," speech presented  at Defining Convergence: 3rd International Ifra Newsroom Summit.

Lewis, S. (2012). The tension between professional control and open participation. Information Communication & Technology, 15, 836-866.

Quinn, S. (2009). Mobile journalism enables newspapers to provide real-time coverage online, Innovations in newspapers. 66-69

Rogers, E. (1995). Diffusion of Innovations. 4^th Ed. New York: Free Press.

Singer, J. B. (2010). Journalism ethics amid structural change. Daedalus, 2, 89-99.

The Latest Buzzword

Mobile journalism is not a new term, yet it is the latest “buzzword” in newsrooms. Journalists are using their mobile devices as more than a mere tool to contact their sources, editors, producers, etc., but there is no definite definition for what mobile journalism is. Mobile devices have advanced the journalism workflow and how journalists work from the field. Mobile phone applications such as Camera+, Evernote, iTalk, and iMovie are being used by journalists for news reporting, sharing news on mobile news platforms as well as the entire cross-media portfolio, yet this same technology puts the role of a journalist at everyone’s fingertips.

Mobile journalism has yet to have a concrete definition, however industry professionals as well as scholars have come up with various definitions in their own words. Kate Marymont defines a mobile journalist as a journalist who works alone and away from the newsroom to create hyperlocal multimedia for an audience living in or interested in a geographically defined community. Stephen Quinn says a mobile journalist, or “mojo” can report from anywhere armed only with a mobile phone provided they have a reliable wireless connection. According to David Cameron, “mobile journalism” is a loosely applied term to describe a journalistic practice based on reporters equipped with portable multimedia equipment. Still murky, the term or idea of mobile journalism has yet to have a concise and concrete definition across the board, which may present a problem for newsroom cultures or a social system trying to fully adopt the idea. Furthermore, newsrooms may resist adopting a technology that puts journalists on par with the general public.

All of the technologies that journalism has embraced since the telegraph have reflected the twin desires for speed and increased efficiencies. The history of journalists’ use of news gathering technologies illustrates this point: tools like long-distance telephone, the satellite phone and portable electronic news gathering kits used in Afghanistan and Iraq, are all examples of this evolution. Journalists and the news making process continue to adapt to the continuous emergence of new technology and its capabilities making the life in a newsroom today more technologically complex.

Mobile phones allow journalists to report the news wherever it happens, without depending on a system of reporting, i.e. engineering, show producing, live shots, etc., and location-based mobile tools can help reporters reach more specific audiences. In order to fully understand the state of mobile journalism journalism scholars like myself have to study how journalists use their mobile phone while on the job, mobile journalism has to have a concrete definition, and those who define themselves as a mobile journalism experts, have to be able to share their knowledge and their reasoning for its existence in the field.

What is Mobile Journalism?

Digital technology has revolutionized the journalist's toolkit with affordable miniaturized still and video cameras for producing high-quality multimedia, and connection equipment enabling that content to be transmitted via satellite from almost anywhere on the globe for publication on the Internet. Two results have been the advent of news production by an innovative type of lone, multimedia reporter, known as a “mojo” (mobile journalist) or “sojo” (solo journalist), and an increasing focus on “hyper-local” news on media websites. In an era of heightened newspaper and television competition driven by steadily declining North American readership and viewer numbers, many media managers have embraced with enthusiasm the solo journalist—able to move fast and travel light, at lower cost than traditional news teams. This paper surveys the impact that developments in multimedia publishing have had on the news produced by such solo journalists. It finds evidence of degradation of the genre in some, but not all, cases and concludes that since the Pandora's box of mojo journalism has been opened, if used judiciously by journalists with sufficient experience, there is some hope that the new modalities may result in responsible journalism enriched with multifaceted storytelling.