My MOJO experience

Mobile journalism is the future for the field. With more technologies adapting to the rise in cell phone reliance, it only makes sense that journalism switches from heavy, expensive hardware to the versatility of a smart phone.

Recently, in my Multimedia Reporting class here at Virginia Tech, I was tasked with using only my mobile devices to create entire articles in order to experiment with the field of mobile journalism. I was almost amazed as to how easy it was to formulate entire stories using just apps on my iPhone and an iPad.

One app that I discovered to be really easy to use was Steller. Steller is an app I would recommend for shorter, more personal articles but was fun to use all the same. This app offers the opportunity to upload high quality pictures and videos to an article that is built in a storybook fashion, allowing readers to flip between pages. The only downside to this app is that there is no capabilities to read articles in the landscape format, cropping photos and images to fit in the upright position. This can ruin the framing that was intended when the original visual media was taken. With those problems, this is still a decent app to experience mobile journalism with.

Another experience that I was able to partake in to discover mobile journalism was using an iPad and the app, Storehouse. Using the iPad was an interesting experience on its own, being that it had a bigger screen to work with and a keyboard. The app was also interesting as you simply took pictures and videos, then developed the story around them. Orientation wasn’t a big deal with this app since it was all one large page for the article instead of flipbook style with Steller. The only downside was trying to use the iPad. From poor video quality in low light, to just being outright bulky, working with the actual iPad was a hassle.