In the old days, let’s say way back in 1999, broadcast journalists had to lug around bulky recording devices and oversized cameras. These days, most journalists have all the tools for capturing a great story in their pocket. Your smart phone is the new Swiss Army knife for professional and citizen journalists. Non-profit MobileActive.org has created the Mobile Media Toolkit, which collects different tools and resources that help 21st century journalists to use mobile technology efficiently.
The simple fact is that using mobile phones in media production isn’t always as easy as it seems. Finding the right tool and using it correctly to reach the broadest possible audience requires knowledge of the mobile landscape. The need for guidance in the industry is apparent.
The Mobile Media Toolkit provides guidance on tools, resources, and case studies of how mobiles can be used for reporting, news broadcasting, and citizen media participation on a variety of platforms and in a variety of circumstances, especially when expanding copywriting services.
If you’re looking for a one-stop resource for all things mobile, the mobile media tool kit is the place.
Here are a couple of reasons Mobile Media Tool Kit says they are revolutionizing citizen and professional reporting.
Create Media on Your Phone:
- Mobiles phones are always with you. Knowing how to capture multimedia on your phone will enable you to capture breaking news and information at a moment’s notice.
- Mobiles are portable and unobtrusive recording devices, and can be used in places where camera crews are banned. There are, essentially, always there.
- Journalists have reported that recording video or audio interviews with mobile phones often helps subject stay relaxed and comfortable.
- Location-based reports can add valuable geographic context to reports. This will help content reach specific audiences who are often looking for news relevant to their environment and location.
- Depending on your budget, a mobile phone can act as a cheap recording device and save you money you might otherwise spend on a fancier recording set up.
Share Media Via Your Phone
After creating content, one of the best ways to create an audience for that content is simply to publish it online. There are many online platforms which will let you self-publish content and build an audience for that content. Web publishing can be quick, easy, and supports all kinds of information that can be uploaded from mobiles (including audio, video, photo, and location information).
There are many reasons to know about and create platforms for publishing mobile content.
- If you are creating news content on your phone, you will need a platform to publish your content. For multimedia content such as text, audio, videos, or photos, online is often the best publication medium.
- Most people carry their mobile phones with them everywhere. By making it easy for the general public to upload content captured on their phones, you can increase the reach of content, speed of coverage, as well as diversity of the content you showcase.
- News consumers, especially on mobile phones, are becoming increasingly participatory. Letting users participate on their mobile phones is the next step, as it makes participation easier and more accessible to a wider audience.
- Not only can user-generated content drastically increase the amount of content you have, examples show that more people may seek to access this user-generated content as well.
- These platforms can work with a variety of publishing platforms (like online publishing, the radio, or mobile phones), and in some cases, can plug in directly to your current infrastructure.
Deliver Content Mobile to Mobile
There are many reasons to disseminate content to mobile phones.
- There are 5 billion global mobile phone subscriptions. This translates to more than a half of the world’s population having a mobile phone. This is an audience hard to ignore.
- Usage of these mobile phone technologies is growing along with access. For example, there were 5 billion text messages sent in a month in the last half of 2009 in the United States.
- For publishers that are already delivering content to an online audience, delivering mobile content may not require much additional work.
- Mobile phone usage and accessibility is growing. Not having mobile-accessible content will be a competitive disadvantage, especially as Gartner has predicted mobile phones to become the primary devices for web access by 2013.
- News consumption over mobile, in particular, is also a growing phenomenon. A Pew survey revealed in 2010 that a third of United States consumers already consume news on their mobile phones. The number is predicted to grow in the future.
How do you use your mobile phone as a reporting too? Any aps or hacks that help you do your job?