Mobile Reporting

You’ve started using your cell phones to take photos around campus.

This week we’ll dive into more ways journalists are using their cell phones for reporting. It used to seem unique and cutting edge to use mobile tools for reporting, but now it’s commonplace.

Mobile reporting is mostly used when time is critical. For longer projects, journalists typically use better quality cameras, audio equipment and editing tools to make more polished, professional products.

But for breaking news, reporters have many different mobile tools to make their reporting clear and professional without ever leaving the scene.

Social Media

Journalists use different apps to get breaking news out to readers.

Twitter and Facebook are two of the most widely used by journalists. With a good Wifi signal, journalists can post videos, photos and text right to the social media platforms to keep readers up-to-date.

The above photo shows just one thread on the Valley Independent Sentinel’s Facebook page from Election Day 2015. I posted several updates to the thread, and added photos throughout the night.

Video Editing

Most often, you’ll want to shoot video with a high quality camera, equipped with an external microphone. But there are sometimes you want to send video from the field to augment your reporting in a simple way. It could be because of the timeliness of the video or other deadlines you’re working under that day, or simply a lack of equipment.

Whatever the reason, if you’d like to shoot and send video from your mobile device, there are several apps that can help you.

Apps like Periscope and Meerkat let you stream video live from your phone. Others, such as SnapChap, Tout, Instagram and Twitter, allow for short video uploads from your phone.

You can download apps such as iMovie to do some custom edits within your device. You can also complete simple crops and trims of video clips within your library on most phones.

Videolicious is another app being used by several news companies because it allows quick and easy editing of videos, including the ability to insert b-roll and voice-overs and standard logos.

The video embedded above was shot on a cell phone and edited quickly using Videolicious.

The company has several tutorials on how to edit short videos using the tool.

This one shows a hypothetical story about a children’s swimming program. While you know most of the details about who to pick as sources and what to ask them, this video is helpful in two ways: You get a sense for how to hold the camera and how close to get to the people while interviewing them. You also see first-hand how the program works with the footage the reporter gathered.

Note-Taking/Collaboration Tools

Mobile tools can help you as a reporter for other ways than publishing information right to the web. There are lots of apps that help you take notes, gather information and collaborate with others.

• Evernote
• Google Drive