Future of Journalism?

Journalism is transforming into a multi-media source. No longer can TV and newspapers dominate the delivery of news. The internet has lead to the convergence of traditional types of media into one ‘mega’ news system containing video images, voice, words and interactivity between the receiver and provider of news content.

The future of journalism is without doubt online.

VJ and MoJo

Above : Reuters are equipping Journalists with everything they need to file a report.

Developments in technology are revolutionising the way journalists work. Not only do camera phones allow citizens to record pictures and send to news organisations, but the technology is reaching such high quality that Mojo’s or Mobile Journalists are taking the world by storm. Equipped with only a mobile phone, reporters in Scandinavia, the UK, Europe, USA and Africa can record and upload news items to the internet. Stephen Quinn’s article ‘Who found my MoJo’ highlights reasons why Australia is lagging behind in the area. Basically, it costs too much money to surf the internet and upload data in the ‘Land Down-Under’.

STOMPing into the 21st century

STOMP (Straits Times Online Mobile and Print) is allowing Singaporeans all a chance to act as citizen journalists. An offshoot of the island’s primary media outlet, it generates all its content from contributions of everyday people who snap photos/video or would like to bring an issue into discussion. The innovation, commented upon by Stephen Quinn in “Citizen journalism gets things done in Singapore as digital revolution moves forward” is having quite an effect, with government moving to alter grievances of the public. It appears there is also quite a demand for it with social networks sprouting up. The site is upbeat and casual with photos, polls, gossip and discussions. For Singapore, whose media was once rigid and controlled, this is a massive step forward and proceeds other countries adaptation of convergent media on the internet. It is almost the ultimate Facebook friend whom everyone chats to daily.

Videoblogging

Video blogging was the natural progression for bloggers writes Jennifer Woodward Maderazo in “5 Videoblogs That Do It Right”. Having trawled the net for various videoblogs, I agree that the most appealing are those with fairly high production quality, run for no more than a couple of minutes and follow a consistent sequence (eg regular format – starting credits etc). The charm of many is their ability to entertain or inform in such a short period of time we do not feel as though it is robbing us of valuable time in our overwhelmingly busy lives. Ask a Ninja and Alive in Baghdad were excellent. However, localising this phenomena, Frezned (aka Tom Mclean), a Geelong local, launched a series of YouTube videos that attract up 500,000 views each. He now also writes a weekly column of ramblings for the Geelong Advertiser. Just shows that filming yourself, in your bedroom, talking about nothing in particular can make you seemingly popular and interesting to others. Whatever people post, someone, it seems, is bound to watch it!

Sharing photos online

There are a number of free web based tools that allow individuals to create a compilation of photos to music in a ‘slide show format’. This weeks reading “Which is the best photo gallery editor? Part two,” published by the Online Journalism Review examines four of the webs most popular, concluding Google owned Picasa the winner. Each was judged on user-friendliness and compatibility with various browsers. Jumping online I decided to test just how easy Picasa was. Without a Google account, there was a little messing about creating an account, and I did become slightly confused at times, the whole process took substantially longer than I anticipated. I suspect there must be a much easier way. The program seemed to upload every picture I had on my laptop…