EIJ13: Mobile newsgathering: Making the most of your smartphone
“The smartphone is increasingly an everyday tool for journalists, alongside the venerable notebook. On Aug. 26 at the Society of Professional Journalists’ Excellence in Journalism 2013 convention in Anaheim, California, Newsday’s online local news editor suggested ways for journalists to get the most out of this new part of their arsenals.
“We use our smartphones for a heck of a lot of things” at Newsday,” Corry told the journalists in attendance.
(And it’s not just print journalists who do so: Washington-area radio reporter Neal Augenstein now uses just his iPhone to record audio, Corry said.)
Using smartphones can enable journalists to do their work faster, and enable to them to take on modern tasks, like interacting with readers and audience members via social media and engage in multimedia storytelling.
None of this is optional for Newsday journalists, according to Corry.
“You don’t have a choice any more; these are expected skills,” he said. “You have to come in with a basic knowledge of smartphone journalism; you have to be willing to try everything.”
Even when journalists bring along some of Corry’s suggested optional equipment – a Bluetooth keyboard (which I used to liveblog at EIJ13 to great effect), gloves that work with touch screens and external lenses, microphones and lights – the entire kit is much more portable than more traditional mobile journalist equipment.
The multimedia journalism enabled by smartphones is helping accelerate the convergence between traditionally isolated branches of the media.
“You’re not ‘print journalists,’ you’re not ‘broadcast journalists.’ You’re all just ‘journalists,'” Corry said. “If I talk to someone just coming out of #journalism school and they tell me they’re a ‘print journalist,’ I feel sorry for them.”
New York photojournalist Ben Lowy famously used his iPhone to cover the Arab Spring in Libya.
“These phones now, the (photo) quality is great, and can be used in print or on TV,” Corry said.
Lowy even applied filters to some of his work, shooting photos with the Hipstamatic app. The company has said they’ll be producing a Lowy-inspired set of filters in the future.
“If you tell people it’s coming from a mobile device … I think they get it, at this point,” Corry said.
Similarly, Instagram photos have appeared on the front page of the New York Times.
For more traditional photo manipulation, Corry recommended the Photogene app.
Other recommendations included using Dropbox to share files between mobile devices and the newsroom, any of a host of video-editing applications (including VideoPro Camera, Filmic Pro or iMovie) and Google Voice to record phone interviews for later download.
Other tips include leaning against a solid surface when a tripod isn’t available for shooting photos or video and putting smartphones into airplane mode to avoid calls while recording multimedia. He also recommends keeping an eye on the #iphoneography, #smartphonejournalism and #mojo (for “mobile journalist”) hashtags on Twitter.
“A couple years ago, no one did (smartphone journalism),” Corry said. “Now an increasing number of people are doing great work.”
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