I had a great opportunity to present free web tools at the Society of Professional Journalists Conference in Fort Worth over the weekend. Along with news reporters, Rebecca Aguilar and Kent Chapline, we were able to successfully present very functional mobile and web tools that can be downloaded for free.These tools can be utilized in both iPhones and all Android phones as well as from computers.

News can come at any moment and I believe that these tools will help reporters, photographers and journalists capture the moment, publish it and share it with the public because of the new media we have today. I’m not a journalist myself but I know the importance of today’s media platforms and the content that can produced and shared whether it be text, video, audio or images.

News events can take on any form at any time and nowadays and you don’t have time to put together a news crew or setup broadcast equipment. Technology has improved enough where a smartphone with selective apps is all that you need to cover a hot story. Some say that the journalism industry is dying but I think that it was late in the game when it came to adopting to emerging media, but there’s still time to adapt and utilize these tools for a tech savvy society. A journalist’s experience in collecting information and disseminating it is still valuable because storytelling is vital whether your’e in journalism, public relations or photography. One needs to embrace the value of social networking and mobile technology that will successfully produce the information for the public.

Related articles

• Journalism and Digital Education Roundup, March 27, 2012 (pbs.org)
• Use of social media by journalists across Europe (mediaresearchlab.wordpress.com)
• Better journalism: “We have to learn directly from news consumers through experiments” (sluggerotoole.com)