Mobile Phones- Elevating a New Era of Journalism

Key Points

“A lot of the people who will consume journalism ten years from now will do so on mobile phones, and a lot of those people will be relatively early in their news consumption habits. We have to figure out how and where to meet them, and keep them around.”- Derek Willis

Transformative technologies have taken traditional journalism by storm, thus triggering an innovative system where partnerships can collaborate and exchange platforms and practices, as illustrated by COP15. One distinct form of technology that has drastically changed the spread of information is the mobile phone and will continue to do so as predicted by Derek Willis. The mobile phone gives producers and users instantaneous access to multiple media platforms and it is the responsibility of news media outlets to adapt. A Wired article titled “How the Smartphone Ushered In a Golden Age of Journalism”, argues that the smartphone has an underestimated power and should be used as a tool by media outlets to conform to what the users want and what they utilize every day of their lives. He points out the clever discovery by media investors of not relying on distribution driven by search results, rather they must “appeal to humans and not algorithms”. He provides examples of major media outlets such as the New York Times and the Atlantic who have a bulk of their traffic comes through social media, they have created apps that present their stories in a streamlike fashion. NYT in particular has also added content from other sites as well, thus creating a networked medium of collaboration.

As illustrated by Tim Pool and other activist journalists, the mobile phone has become a handy tool for sharing raw footage of events occurring globally from an entire new perspective. Rather than news content being presented by media outlets looking in on a situation, news content can be presented from the perspective of a participator who is there experiencing the news themselves.. Bruno Torturra, a journalist very similar to Tim Pool, has also taken the use of smartphones as a modern form to cover major news abroad in Brazil. Bruno Torturra is the face of the digital collective site known as Midia Ninja, where the journalists’ essential tools are their smartphones.

References: 

Ted Talk- Bruno Torturra

Wired Article- How the Smartphone Ushered In a Golden Age of Journalism 

Questions:
What are the drawbacks and benefits of mainstream news? Is it essential for contemporary journalism?