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Learning to Use My Smartphone for Journalism

9/29/2011

7 Comments

 
Picture

Today, my Digital Journalism II students begin focusing on how to use photography to enhance their multimedia storytelling. So the excellent daylong training session that five of my Diederich College colleagues and I attended yesterday could not have been more timely – or helpful in terms of revealing relevant mobile resources and tips.

More than 75 people – many of them working journalists – joined us at the "Smart Phones, Smart Journalism Workshop," presented by the American Society of News Editors (ASNE) and the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel hosted the event and Val Hoeppner, the institute's director of education and a multimedia guru, led the way by masterfully teaching how to use mobile technology better and faster.

Hoeppner showed us how to extend our smartphone's capabilities through apps for capturing and editing images, video and audio, as well as for note taking, utilities, geolocation and live streaming. Her Top 10 apps for journalists include Evernote, Dropbox, Photoshop Express, Camera+ and Free WiFi Finder. Evernote helped me take great notes from the presentation to share with my colleagues afterward – and one of my journalism students, Becca French, later pointed out that you can tweet selected copy from within the app after right-clicking your mouse.

Our guru stressed using an iPhone instead of Android and said that, as far as tablets go, news consumption is the No. 1 use of the iPad. Apple may have developers and consumers over a barrel, but its products work, she said.

Of course, tweeting and other social meeting was a primary concern. "It really behooves you as a journalist to get on with it and tweet," Hoeppner said, before adding "shame on you" to those covering beats and not using RSS feeds. Happy to report that our #mobilemedia11 hashtag had enough activity to trend on Twitter in Milwaukee. A shout-out to those of my #JOUR1550 students who retweeted many of my live tweets from the workshop.

Hoeppner implored everyone in the room to become better media curators. Her dream, she said, is that news companies will better enable online users to engage with their web offerings. Saying readers want more and want to share more, Hoeppner said these companies should assign #hashtags to content and use tools like Storify to curate tweeted, reposted or emailed stories, photos and videos. She also shared the Indianapolis Star's Faces of War: Hoosiers Veterans project as an example of how the media can excel via print, online, television and video.

All in all, a day well spent. Really great to learn so much that will help me and my students tell better stories – for as Hoeppner said, "Visual storytelling is more important than ever and storytelling is more important than ever." 

7 Comments
Gee Ekachai
9/30/2011 03:07:24 pm

I am glad it was worth your time, otherwise you'd come to me the next day giving me a hard time for pushing you to attend the workshop :-)

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Carlie Campbell
1/18/2012 05:12:50 am

It's fascinating to me how much real journalism can be done on a cell phone. I just recently switched from a "dumb" to a Smart Phone, and I know I'm not using it as effectively as I could; it was good to read about some of the opportunities I should be taking advantage of.

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Olivia Morrissey
1/18/2012 06:07:56 am

I love having a smart phone, but I definitely would like to take advantages of the applications mentioned in the post. I like how Hoeppner's quote wraps it up at the end. It is so true, and journalists must keep up with the new methods of storytelling.

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Alex Rydin
1/18/2012 10:06:50 am

I had Evernote, Dropbox, Photoshop and Camera+ before I read this blog post, so not much was new to me.

As far as the idea that iPhone is superior to Android, I would not necessarily agree. Its much more about preference than anything. I owned every iPhone except the 4S. I've owned an iPad, two Macbook Pros, two iMacs and a MacBook Air. I love Apple. But the notion that the iPhone is superior to Android is quite dated. Over Christmas break, I decided to try Android, and have not looked back. The bigger screen and better camera make photography much easier, and the 4G connectivity makes uploads and downloads for programs like Dropbox, Evernote, and Soundcloud lightning fast, faster even than Marquette's Wi-Fi.

Android is not quite as user friendly as the iPhone. But if you can get past that, you can get just as much, if not more, out of an Android.

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Tess Quinlan
1/18/2012 11:51:22 am

I love my smart phone and use it constantly. The quote about getting with it and tweeting is very apt to my life. I finally pressured my dad, who works in athletics, to tweet from his Twitter account (@SaintPetersAD, if you want updates on the Peacocks). Explaining hashtags and mentions has never been so amusing!

From a journalism perspective, I have never used RSS Feeds, but I think it would be beneficial for me as a journalist to start using them.

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Dana Christen
1/18/2012 12:25:16 pm

I love that journalism and technology are such a perfect fit because I enjoy trying out new things in the tech field. JOUR 1100 really stressed the importance of having a smart phone as a journalist and I can't imagine not having one--it makes everything so much easier!

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Joe Kvartunas
1/18/2012 04:06:01 pm

This is very interesting to me. As somewhat of a tech junkie I have always found apps and smart-phones interesting in their capabilities.

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