Who Found my Mojo?

In ‘Who found my mojo’ Stephen Quinn discusses the rise of mojos or mobile journalists, reporters who carry nothing but a mobile phone.

The Reuters news agency in London equipped its journalists with a mobile journalism toolkit approximately one year ago.

The toolkit includes the Nokia N95/N82, a Bluetooth keyboard, a digital microphone and a phone-adapted tripod.

The greatest advantage of mojos, in my opinion, is that reporters no longer have to carry around heavy equipment and because they can record interviews and events without the need of a film crew, it makes it easier to be on the scene as an event is unfolding.

Robert Scoble has been broadcasting live video from his cell phone since last year and claims he can get live video onto the Internet faster than he can make a phone call.

The immediacy of the Internet enables audiences to be exposed to news almost instantaneously.

The most significant disadvantage of mojos is that in remains limited in some developed nations, such as Australia, due to the high cost of data charges.

My biggest concern is that being solely responsible for filming, interviewing and editing may result in me (as a future journalist) becoming a jack of all trades and master of none.

See the video below for an example of mobile journalism.

Five Videoblogs That do it Right

In ‘Five videoblogs that do it right‘, Jennifer Woodard Maderazo analyses political, technology, comedy, food and wine and daily dose blogs to demonstrate how this medium can entertain and inform if used effectively.

My favourite videoblog was ‘Alive in Baghdad‘.

The production is of high quality, therefore messages are not lost.

The most significant aspect of this vlog, in my opinion, is that mainstream media only shows a limited view on what is taking place in Iraq because of the war, with the focus usually being on the money spent and number of killed or wounded people.

Alive in Baghdad is reported by locals and shows stories and the realities of people who are living in a war zone.

In particular, I was fascinated by ‘Iraqi refugees forced into prostitution‘ and ‘Getting to school in Iraq‘ as they both show the detrimental effects they are suffering due to the war and are unlike any other story we have been exposed to from Iraq.

This vlog effectively fills the gap in war reporting and enhances our knowledge and creates alternate opinions on the war in Iraq by offering audiences to view the matter from the lives of the innocent people directly affected.

Before viewing the vlogs recommended by Maderazo, I did not understand the difference between amatuer videos posted on YouTube and vlogs.

I can now appreciate how high quality production values and being informative, as well as entertaining reporting, can make such a significant difference.

Citizen Journalism Gets Things Done in Singapore

User-generated content has become somewhat of a phenomenon in Singapore.

Singapore Press Holdings, the country’s main media group, launched Stomp (Straits Times online mobile and print) in June 2006 and within six months it was attracting 300,000 unique visitors a year.

*  Jennifer Lewis (then editor) and Felix Soh (SPH deputy editor, multi-media), courtesy of Quinn S., ALJ301 Multi-Media Journalism, Lecture 2, ‘Asia’s Media Innovators’

Citizen journalism constitutes 80 to 82 per cent of Stomp’s content.

Singapore academics think it’s a cultural thing unique to Singapore, where citizen reporters would rather talk to a reporter, therefore peolpe send an email or SMS about an issue or story and Stomp producers interview them and re-write the story for them.

Citizen reporters, however, have the power to clarify the story and check it for accuracy to ensure it has reflected what they were meant to say.

My favourite aspect of the Stomp site is that it focuses on social networking.

Stomp has created an online community, where they have formed their own football group, tuition groups and they have outings they organise among themselves.

In this sense, convergence has united fragmented audiences and created a community.

Stomp is not serious journalism, however deals with journalism that affects people’s lives.

Although highly innovative and unlike anything we have seen from Australian media, Stomp is not something I would read regularly, as I have no interest in articles such as ‘How do you view unfaithful women‘ and  ’Is it important for a guy to be a gentleman?‘.

For me it screams mindless entertainment.    

Which is the Best Free Photo Gallery Editor?

Robert Niles, in ‘Which is the best free photo gallery editor? Part two‘, reviews Picasa, PictureTrail, BubbleShare and SlideFlickr, in an attempt to find which one would work best for a start-up or small -scale news website.

Niles was searching for a Web-based tool that allows a user to upload photos  and have them displayed as a Flash photo gallery that can be embedded on another website.

Ideally, the tool would allow the creator to add captions and to control the display style, size and speed of the images. 

I decided to investigate for myself and like Niles, I found that Picasa was the easiest to use and had the most effective results.

Bubbleshare has the ability to quickly and easily upload multiple images, however my captions were not able to be viewed and I did not like how the slide show would not start automatically.

The biggest frustration of Bubbleshare is that photos are not placed in the gallery in order and I found it quite confusing to work out how to correct this.  

I found Slidelickr quite complicated to use and the gallery was tediously slow to open.

You can view my first attempt at creating a picture gallery below.