Reporting from the field is not a new endeavor for newspaper publishers.

Some areas of coverage, such as major political campaigns, sports and wars, to name but three, have long demanded that print journalists report and file their stories and images far from the newsroom.

 

What is changing today is that some publishers are expanding their mobile efforts to make them an integral part of their daily coverage, much the way that broadcast does.

With an ever-increasing consumer demand for news as it occurs, having well-equipped journalists ready and able to file their stories, images and video “live” from anywhere gives publishers a chance to really compete with any other media organization in the race to attract consumers and keep them coming back.

Few large-scale examples

Yet despite the availability of high-quality mobile equipment and ongoing improvements in key related areas such as Internet connectivity, few newspaper publishers have launched comprehensive mobile journalism strategies.

That is slowly changing, thanks in part to pioneering efforts from publishers such as Gannett and, in Australia, Fairfax Media.

Gannett, for example, has aggressively embraced mobile journalism (which the company calls mojos for short) and has trained more than 300 reporters as mojos groupwide.

These mojos are provided with laptops, mobile phones and video-equipped compact cameras, according to Jennifer Carroll, vice president of new media content for Gannett’s U.S. Community Publishing division. They spend their working day out in the community they cover, and often literally write and file stories and images directly from their cars.

At The News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla., Gannett’s most advanced mobile journalism operation, all of the reporters are mojos, Carroll said. “And all of them report for all products, whether online (daily or niche) or print (daily, weekly or niche).

“At other papers where the concept has been taking hold over the last months, this level of integration exists to a lesser extent,” she said.

“Some papers have a handful of reporters they call mojos, whose tasks are primarily designed to feed breaking news to the newspaper’s Web site or microsites. And there are many models in between.”

Fairfax boosts use of digital devices

In Australia, Fairfax is equipping more and more of its journalists with a JasJam smart phone.

The device, manufactured by i-mate, is a combination PC, videophone, videocamera and audio recorder, said Kerry Metcalfe-Smith, group organization development director.

Most of Fairfax’s metro dailies have a number of JasJam devices in operation, Metcalfe-Smith said, while Brisbanetimes.com.au, a Web-only publication, has issued most of its reporters with the gadgets.

For Gannett, creating mojos has been only one part of a larger plan to overhaul its operations to better connect with customers. Among other initiatives has been the reorganization of its newsrooms into information centers and the development of more niche products.

While the mojo project is still growing across the company, Mackenzie Warren, managing editor of digital information for The News-Press, can already point to several benefits he sees from having journalists working in the community rather than the newsroom. Among them:

•Speed: Journalists report directly from the scene. “In a competitive market like ours, where there are four network TV affiliates and another major daily newspaper, that extra 30 or 45 minutes of speed per story makes a big difference,” Warren says. Fairfax’s Metcalfe-Smith agrees: “We have had many breaking news situations where staff have been able to file rich, multimedia stories quickly from the field.”

•Efficiency: Rather than having a reporter, photographer and possibly a videographer all covering the same story, mojos handle both words and images and post them directly to the www.news-press.com Web site and its related microsites.

•Authenticity and trustworthiness: Reporting from the scene makes reporting more lively and authoritative. Fairfax’s Metcalfe-Smith said that the JasJam devices provide journalists with more flexibility. “In breaking-news situations where a journalist is equipped only with a JasJam, they have some flexibility about how they cover the story — they may choose to phone a story into our copy-takers, transmit their own text file, or shoot and file video or still images to the newsroom in a matter of minutes.”

Despite the benefits, Gannett’s Warren also acknowledged there are some drawbacks. For example, multitasking isn’t for everyone. “Some people’s productivity breaks down when they are asked to multitask,” he said.

“There’s a certain level of coaching that’s possible on this, but you have to shape the specific tactics around the capabilities each mojo has. For that reason, each mojo is a bit different in what they can do and what we’ve come to expect of them.”

Likewise, he said, editors have had to become more realistic.

“No matter how much training we give a mojo, he or she is not going to be equipped to give Pulitzer-quality photography. For one thing, they use point-and-shoot cameras. But more importantly, they’re not seasoned craftsmen like professional photographers are, so we have learned to be mindful that there is a ceiling for the quality of work we’ll get,” he said.

Training is essential

In order for journalists to work independently, as well as work away from the newsroom, training is key.

“At the beginning, we offer about a weeklong boot camp-style training, which is focused on how to make all the hardware and software work together,” said Warren.

“Following that, there is live, on-the-job, trial-by-fire training once these people go out and start covering their beats. Often in the first live week, we will send a trainer on a ride-along for the first day or two for on-site support, both technical and moral.”

Metcalfe-Smith said that Fairfax Media’s training time is considerably shorter, primarily because journalists there use only one device.

“It takes about three hours to take a first-time user to the point where they can confidently use all of the functions,” she said.

Clearly, newspapers are finding multiple ways to integrate mobile journalists into their workflows. But the important thing, said Randy Covington, director of the Newsplex Training Center, is for papers to get involved.

“From what I see, it’s a hybrid, it’s not ‘one-size-fits-all,’ (or) ‘everybody’s going to be a backpack journalist’ approach.

“In a newspaper, it’s smart to have people who can operate in this function,” he said.  “It’s my contention that as news organizations hire people, they ought to be looking for this kind of person — not to the exclusion of others — but if you don’t have any of these kinds of people, you are missing an opportunity.”