News Phone Photos: Stopgap Journalism

I check on Steve Outing on E-Media Tidbits every day, because he believes camera phones are a wonderful tool for journalists and he reports on how these new handsets are being used by the press.

In his latest entry, he relates a great anecdote as reported by Lost Remote's Cory Bergman: "After arriving on scene at the hospital after a chemistry lab explosion at a Seattle-area school, reporter Jim Forman of KING-TV snapped a picture on his camera phone. Minutes later, it appeared on KING5.com. An award-winning shot? Hardly. But ... instead of waiting for video to be shot, fed, and encoded, they posted the pic as soon as it landed in their e-mail, saving at least an hour."

Steve Outing concludes: "Photo phones in the hands of journalists. It's largely about timeliness and being first on breaking news, not quality (though that will come as the technology evolves). In a case like this, a low-quality camera-phone shot may be the only thing a news organization has until a professional photographer can get his/her shots processed and edited". Hear, hear.

emily | 6:05 PM | Reporters and Picture Phones |
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