There was a time when journalists were associated only with being exclusive print media practitioners – being on the scene with a notepad and a pencil, getting the news, interviewing characters, beating deadlines by personally submitting their stories to newspaper editors. Writing skills and proficiency in both the English and Filipino languages were enough tools to earn their bread and butter. But, as technological evolution would have it, those times are gone.
Nowadays, for a journalist to survive in the cutthroat competition that is news writing, it becomes almost impossible to stick to being one-dimensional as far as news gathering and reporting are concerned. The current rule of the trade seems to be this: to toe the media line, you have to be tech-savvy. And you only have two choices to be “in”: sink or swim.
To swim, a journalist will do well to listen to the dictates of the infotechnocrats – the people responsible for the innovation in technology that makes for quicker dissemination of information to the public.
Morse codes, telegrams, beepers, even telefaxes have been outmoded and the wonderful world of the Internet has been opened for the entire humanity to discover. You don’t need to buy newspaper to get the news. You don’t need five years to apply for a telephone line. You don’t need snail mail to send photos to loved ones far away. You don’t need to wait a couple of days or even weeks to get a much-anticipated response from someone.
Just listen to the sound of these new information tools: Skype, Yahoo, Google, Friendster, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Text Messaging, YouTube. These and more will allow for the metamorphosis of a fledgling writer to a compleat journalist.
Here’s what they mean and how they can be useful tools of the journalism trade:
1. Skype (click to download)
Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. Skype created a little piece of software that makes communicating with people around the world easy and fun. With Skype you can say hello or share a laugh with anyone, anywhere. And if both of you are on Skype, it’s free.
Imagine, interviewing someone from anywhere in the globe and recording your telephone conversation in your own computer? How helpful can that be give authenticity to your report?
2. Twitter (click to sign-in)
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter web site, via the Twitter web site, short message service (SMS), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook.
What better way for news to be confirmed, passed on, elaboted by sources and contacts in your own social network?
3. Flickr (click to create an account)
Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform that allows users to share personal photographs and bloggers to make use of the site as a photo repository.
Can you imagine how convenient it is for a photojournalist to share a moment in time captured by a digital camera? And for a news or feature writer to be able to cull from a wide repository of photographs?
4. IM
Instant Messaging (IM) is a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text. The text is conveyed via computers connected over a network such as the Internet.
Who has not tried a Yahoo Messenger chat for instance? Using this conveniently transforms an interview into a valuable transcribed information.
5. SMS
Short Message Service (SMS) is a communications protocol allowing the interchange of short text messages between mobile telephone devices. SMS text messaging is the most widely used data application on the planet.
Posted by JOEY L. GARCIA, 28 June 2008
