As a journalist, I love the idea of mobile journalism. Not only does this make my job easier, but hopefully enhances the experience for my audience. Mark Briggs, in his book Journalism Next, uses an example of a soccer player crashing his Ferrari as a way to show the importance of this mobile journalism. In the example, a journalist knew of the accident well before anyone else, and was able to stay put and shoot the video and images before the police could come and close down the scene. This is a perfect example of hard-breaking news that was relayed to the audience in what can be described as record time, and before any other news organization could get wind of it. The journalist was able to break the story before anyone else, therefore displaying the perfect definition of what a journalist does.
A scary though to me whilst reading this book was that children in the United Kingdom receive their first mobile phone, on average, at age 8. What an 8 year old child is doing with a cell phone, or what they even need one for, is beyond me, but it just goes to show that everyone needs to be connected to eachother at all times in some way or another. With statistics like these, journalists would need to find new ways to be able to reach out to this audience, and in affect would be reaching out to an even bigger audience since they would all be connected with their mobile devices. The audience is going mobile, and so should the journalist.
Besides using mobile devices, journalists are using other types of digital material to "digitalize" their lives. Email is used more frequently than phones 80% of the time, so it is also important for journalists to have access to email, and even better if they have a mobile device that they have with them at all times that they can receive email on. Journalists can also use other programs such as powerpoint and excel to organize their stories and ideas. Another job of a journalist is also to gather data, statistics, and other information in which programs such as excel would come in handy.
Overall, it is not just mobile devices that can shape the world of journalism, but other advanced technological programs as well. Journalists need to be able to use all sorts of programs to further their readership and pull in new audiences. Now that everyone is connected somehow in some way to one another, it is important to think about that when getting out the latest hard-breaking news story and think about the many platforms that are required to ensure that this will happen.
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ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear that you as a journalist have merged and are embracing the postive things that are coming from mobile journalism. I know that a few of my other friends who are journalist dont like the idea of it. However, like you said it makes your job easier and you can please your audience in so many ways, who wouldnt want that? You also discussed digitizing your life... I have to agree on the importance of email. Yeah- texting workings but messages can get mixed up and its so informal these days. Keep up the good work with using photojournalism to its full potential. Thanks for sharing your input/opinion on the topics discussed. Keep up the good work.
Sincerely, K.
In Japan(my home country), children nowadays start owning cellphone really young probably at age of 6 or 7. There are some reasons, and most of children use cellphones for kids. Most important purpose is for security reason. Because kidnapping or criminal cases over children have happened a lot, parents want to check if their kids are coming back safe. And those cellphones for kids have GPS functions so parents can check where their children are now whenever they want. So it does make sense owning cellphone young. And yea, i like your journalistic perspective!
ReplyDeleteI understand the concept of allowing a child to have a cell phone at a young age for those security purposes, but it is astounding how many children are given phones with internet and texting. When I was in middle school I was allowed to borrow my mom's cell phone, if she was staying at home, when I would go out with my friends so she could contact me if she needed me to. I got my first cell phone when I was 15, and even then it was a track phone, not a fancy smart phone like what kids have these days, and I had to get a job to pay for the minutes/texting myself. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.
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