Smartphones change the news industry
Fred Pui
3-4-2012
A new word “MoJo” which means Mobile Journalism appears in the latest years. With the popularization of smartphones, people can easily report news. Stephen Quinn, the Digital Development Editor of South China Morning Post said, smartphones reduce the cost of news reporting, and this allows more civil journalist to report news.
“ Comparing with using satellite, reporting cars and other traditional reporting methods, using mobile phone is more convenient and cheap, just a thousand dollars, you can be a civil journalist,” said Stephen Quinn.
In the digital age, people can easily use their smartphone to take pictures, filming videos and upload to the web. Stephen Quinn thinks, the mobile journalism will be faster and faster, and the quality will be better. “However, civil journalist will not replace professional journalist. Professional journalists’ technique, ideas of law and their network, all these are their professional property and civil journalists don’t have,” said Stephen Quinn.
MoJo changes the news environment and this creates a more challenging atmosphere for people to create their own news platforms such as Facebook, Weibo and Twitter, other than mainstream news organizations. Mobile Journalism will be a trend in the news industry.