The evolution of mobile reporting
Storytelling
The HD shift is coming – are you ready?
Mar 14th
More and more mobile phones offers HD recording and playback. Sony Ericsson Vivaz is one of the latest. The Vivaz offers video recording in 1280 * 720 – 24 fps. And yes, it’s really 24fps – not a dynamic recording rate. From what I have seen – it’s a step up from Samsung Omnia HD.
When I visited San Francisco last year, major players like Qik and Seesmic told me to watch out for new phones from Motorola, Nokia and Sony Ericsson. And it seems like they where right.
Another major shift is that the stream cast companies are offering better and better quality on HD streaming. With a phone supporting 3.5G network – the quality is starting to get acceptable. Qik has even launched a premium feature, making it easier to download HD clips and burning them to DVDs. From Bambuser I’ve seen really impressive HD quality streams.
The shift towards higher quality streams has a least two major impacts on news outlets and journalist. The first one is that they will find more and more shareable quality video made by audience on the web. The second one is that stream casts will be a more viable way of sending high quality recordings home to office. If you have a large social media network – it will even be a great platform for stand alone publishing.
But in order to make the most out of this shift in technology, a shift in mindset among journalist have to happen. Most of the journalist I know are uncomfortable with showing people their stuff if it isn’t finished. They don’t like stream casting if the stream could be considered raw material. Well her is a newsflash. If you look at pages from Qik, Bambuser, Ustream, Flixwagon and others – you will quickly realize that most people don’t give a damn. They are used to stream cast to preserve and share a moment, even if it might be a little rough in the edges. If you put it in the right context, the audience will understand. What they won’t understand in the future is why you don’t offer stream casts if you are present at an happening.
To the skeptics – yes you are right – your streams can’t all be low quality and shitty. In the right settings, you’ve got to be able to make a good storyline, frame a good picture – and produce good sound. But you have to start somewhere. In the age of social media – I believe most people will forgive you for not being a pro in the beginning, but they will appreciate that you are trying. So pick up your phone, hit the button and STREAM! If you aren’t happy with the result, try again. Don’t give up. It will only get better.
Qik getting a grip on broadcasters
Dec 2nd
Bhaskar Roy – co-founder of Qik. (Foto: Frank Barth-Nilsen)
Qik is one of my all time favorite mobile applications. Today I met co-founder Bhaskar Roy in their headquarters in Redwood City outside San Francisco.
Qik offers live streaming from different cell phones. About 80 percent of their user base is regular people, streaming live from weddings and other sort of events affecting their lives. The other 20 percent are various sorts of broadcasters or journalists, making up for about 80 percent of the traffic. According to Bhaskar Roy, more and more broadcasters are getting their eyes up for this way of communicating with raw authentic content. But many of them also find ways to use Qik streams on ordinary TV. Using solutions like SDI cards for moving the web streaming to main stream TV. Some of the larger companies using Qik is CBS and BBC.
Qik welcomes major broadcasters and will try to help them integrating it into the content flow.
Transparency
But you will also see that other organizations find this type of direct streaming on the mobile platform useful. Congressman John Culberson use Qik to stream from various meetings and events to promote transparency in Congress.
The biggest suprise for Bhaskar Roy was when the Vatican started using Qik. It wasn’t the pope, but people working in the Vatican. The World Economic Forum has also started using Qik for press conferences, to let people outside of the forum asking questions.
HD is growing
Mobile phones is getting better and better. Screens have higher resolution, CPUs are faster and more and more phones have high definition cameras. Qik will support this. Some of the best phones for making high quality streams today is Nokia N-series, Samsung Omnia HD and the new Motorola Droid. But Bhaskar thinks new phones from Sony Ericcson will provide some of the best quality. Just monitor my blog and I will try to give you some insight when they arrive. I may also add that Loic Le Meur from Seesmic mentioned that he has high hopes from new phones from both SE and Nokia. Maybe the two major manufactures haven’t gone in hibernation when it comes to development after all?
Going freemium?
Qik is a young company, but has some long term investors. They still really haven’t come up with a way to make money, but some sort of freemium model seems to be imminent. I’m hoping this will ad some new functions to the service, and not only limit existing users if they don’t pay.
Not live on the iPhone
As you may have read – the iPhone app released in the Apple App Store will not let you stream live from Qik. For some reason, the guys at Apple don’t think that’s a good idea and will not allow it. Feel free to let Apple know what you think about this in the comment field. If anyone from Apple would care to elaborate on this, it would be nice.
Like Bambuser, Qik has also got a client on Cydia which is capable of streaming live. But then you have to jailbreak your phone. If you are not at technical user, don’t try to do it. If you are, search for “blackrain”.
The next thing for Qik is opening up for streaming from gaming platforms. Several of the gaming consoles have support for web cams and Qik expand their service to these platforms.
A big thanks to Bhaskar Roy and Qik for welcoming and meeting up with our group of Norwegian journalist on a study trip to San Francisco.
- I read what my friends read
Dec 1st
I met up with Loic Le Meur today, founder of both Seesmic and LeWeb. He talked about the new Seesmic Desktop for Windows and the gathering in Paris next week. Loic is passionate about the social web. As journalists we could probably learn a lot about what people expect from us today and in the future.
Loic Le Meur doesn’t read news on paper. He uses Kindel to read traditional news. For the most part thou, he gets his news from links on Twitter and Facebook.
- I read what my friends read. That’s the most interesting for me. We can exchange interesting links and stories. I don’t think an editor is fit to understand what I want to read. But I do follow some smart journalists. I think it’s much more important that journalists can tell me what they are doing on Twitter or Facebook. I rather be following a smart journalist, than a big news outlet. Journalists have to adapt their work to the new ways communicating, says Le Meur.
He could also tell us that within two weeks, Seesmic will release an Twitter app for iPhone, with the possibility to read list.
Thanks a lot for taking the time to meet us Loic 
Notes from the field
Oct 28th
Freelance journalist Guy Degen has written a great blog post about field reporting with mobile devices. It includes tips and tricks about apps and hacks. You can find it on his blog Notes From The Field. The post is called “Better get your mojo working“.
Why live view is the future for many of us
Oct 8th
I found this 40 minutes clip from the Online News Association 2009 with Leo Laporte. I think his speech is well worth listening too. His thoughts are that live view on the internet is the way of the future. I think he got some good points. Working with today’s mobile phones, you also could have all the tools you need in your pocket.
MOJO report from World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers
Jul 24th
World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) has published a special report: “The mobile journalist – from backpack to pocket journalism“. The author is Prof. Dr. Stephen Quinn.
In the report you will find a lot of material from Mojo Evolution and also some statements from an interview the author did with me some time ago. You have to be an WAN-IFRA member to get the report, and it costs about 270 EUR. The report sums up a lot of experience world wide and puts the evolution of mobile journalism in perspective. If you can’t afford it, you still will find a lot of useful stuff on my site for free. You could also visit Stephen Quinn’s blog – Global Mojo.
Social media aids the protesters in Iran
Jun 17th
If you have checked out Twitter, YouTube or other social media sites today – you will discover that there is a lot of activity about Iran. For Twitter, simply search for the hastag #IranElection and you will be able to follow all sorts of opinions and information. The government has tried to stop media coverage of the protests, but that only seems to agitate the people questioning the results from the election.
It’s not surprising that a lot of people makes tweets. But a lot of video streams are also put out on the web. What sort of “aid” the producers have had, I’m not sure about. Neither who actually produces the videos, but you can watch a sample from LiveStream (former Mogulus) on Persianq. It’s a bit on and off with live streams and recorded streams. The quality from a lot of the streams seems to be from mobile phones. The new democrotatizers.
The first Twitter correspondent
Mar 11th
It had to happen. Sky News has “hired” Ruth Barnett as a new correspondent, reporting stories from Twitter.
Read more about it at JP Digital Digest.
Try it – throw it away!
Feb 5th
- Mackenzie Warren from Gannett
Mackenzie Warren from Gannett, for many know as Mr. Mojo, was a keynote speaker at the conference in Fredrikstad, Norway today. He talked about the changes he made in Fort Meyers News. His basic philosophy is that the news never happens in the newsroom. To report about news, journalists have to be out in the field (pretty basic one should think…). So, all the journalist in FMN had to get out in the street. They produce and send their story from the field. They basicly split the work process in two:
Collector – journalist – MOJOs:
· Report
· Write
· Shoot (video, pictures, sound)
· Produce
Connector – editors:
· Edit
· Crunch
· Publish
Mackenzie also showed us a lot of the things he’s working on in Gannett. One of his core messages is that we have to experiment more to survive. He has three rules for experimentation:
- You have to give a try!
- Failure is a part of success
- You can’t really break anything
In Gannett they aim to have a low threshold for trying out new things. If it don’t work – they throw it away.
Gannett has bought a part of Mogulus. In the future you can expect more live video on sites from Gannett. They are experimenting with live video and combining it with CoveritLive.
Are you deep enough?
Feb 5th
Paul Bradshaw
Paul Bradshaw was talking about the 21st century newsroom on a conference I’m attending in Fredrikstad, Norway. Instead of retelling all – head over to his blog and read his post about this topic. He’s managed to put a lot of all the problems we are struggling with in system.
My reflection after listening to Paul wanders around his perspective on speed versus depth. It seems like traditional media are good on speed, while the blogosphere is better on dept.
As Paul sees it, a news story could be told this way:
-
You get an alert (SPEED)
-
You publish your first draft (SPEED)
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You make your article/package (SPEED)
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You give your story context like hypertext and put in on a portal (DEPTH)
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You make an analysis/reflection (DEPTH)
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You add interactivity like flash, chats, forums or wikis – (DEPTH)
This work is not necessarily done by one person. The old fashion journalists manage the parts regarding speed. Often you will have specialist in the newsroom taking care of the rest. In my opinion traditional media often stop after making the article or package. I think the biggest problem right now is that too few traditional journalist understand the new possibilities on the web. The result is that we get a new line of producers, not necessarily journalist. In that sense, by not learning the news ways when they surface, we diminish bit by bit.
EDIT: On Nieman Journalism Lab, you can also read this interesting story about truth versus speed. So maybe a part of Bradshaws model should take this aspect in consideration also. It then seems like we goth three axis. Speed and depth as our ‘x’ and ‘y’ – truth as our ‘z’.
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