Jeremy Jojola
Three New Mexico journalists recently had a discussion on Heath Haussamen’s Facebook page about the future of media. This week, two of them are sharing their thoughts in guest columns on this site. Here’s the first.
The other day I actually attempted to use this thing called a payphone. It felt weird, like actually getting up to change the channel on a television or using a pencil. I was in a place with no cell signal and I needed to get in touch with my producer for a story I was working on. I dug in my pocket for some change out of habit. Nothing. I never carry cash, only a check card.
I found myself technologically stranded on another planet. I checked an old rusty newspaper machine below the payphone for some quarters, hoping to find something in the slot. No money in there either. I laughed, wondering about the days when I actually used to buy newspapers from these machines.
I miss those days in college when I would actually go out of my way to find the morning news publication. This was of course before cell phones had the capability to download mainstream web content. I miss those newspaper mornings. I would walk to journalism classes with blackened fingers stained from newspaper ink while feeling a sense of satisfaction as if I really got in touch with the news that day.
Turning back to the payphone, I picked up the cold handset, hoping to make a collect call to my producer. No dial tone. A passerby saw my predicament and told me to stand in a nearby spot for a cell signal. He explained the payphones were cut off because nobody uses them anymore.
After probing the air like a scene out of Star Trek, I found some scant signal bars and reconnected with planet earth. All was right with the world once again. I left the dead payphones and the newspaper machine behind and returned to work.
Embracing the Internet
As a reporter for KOB-TV in Albuquerque, I used this same cell phone to produce an actual live shot for television broadcast thanks to its camera this past fall. No bulky, expensive live truck or photographer needed. The actual news report featuring my cell phone live shot made news itself within the television news industry. It may have been the first of its kind given the response I received.
I had e-mails from across the country pouring into my inbox, written by people expressing delight and excitement. I also received snarky e-mails from old-school photographers who obviously felt threatened by a reporter doing their job with a device available to anyone.
I cautiously predict television stations will start taking live cell phone video from folks on the street who are witnesses to breaking news events like fires, traffic accidents and other events suitable for live coverage. The technology is still too crude for conventional, daily use. But someday you’ll see it being exploited, much to the distaste of the old school television folks who scoff at such technology (many of them now work in PR and don’t know how to send a text message).
There’s no doubt that as the tools for us reporters change, the people at home consuming news content are changing too. News viewers and readers of my generation no longer turn pages or turn to section “D7” to find the second half of an article. They point, click and download. Even clicking a mouse is becoming obsolete. Touch screen technology is the new thing.
For newspapers and television stations to avoid becoming like those payphones, I believe they must embrace the Internet and merge with the technology, even to the point of making their Web sites as much a priority for exclusive content. Some television stations are already taking that stance, putting television reporters on Web site video detail rather than the conventional broadcast beat.
Breaking free from dead technology
My words may sound arrogant in my declarations and predictions, but so is assuming the mainstream media in their current form are solely responsible for good news content. Yes, democracy doesn’t exist without a free press, but in order for the press to work right and for the people, it has to free itself from dead technology.
If news bosses play their cards right, and understand their audience and readers, and get creative with marketing their content, the coming age will not be the death of the mainstream media, but rather its rebirth.
It’s already happening as I send this article over e-mail for this excellent publication that uses no ink or paper.
Jojola is an Emmy award winning investigative reporter for KOB-TV in Albuquerque.