The BBC is currently in the process of developing an iPhone application that they’ll make available to their reporters out in the field so that the content they submit can be feed directly into the BBC’s content management system instead of having to wait until said reporter returns to the office to get work done. Said app will let reporters file stories, videos, photos, and audio snippets. Martin Turner, Head of Operations for Newsgathering, says: “Reporters have been using smartphones for a while now, but it was never good quality. You might do it when there was a really important story. Now it is beginning to be a realistic possibility to use iPhones and other devices for live reporting, and in the end if you’ve got someone on the scene then you want to be able to use them. That capability is a really important one.” It’s unknown how much money will be spent developing this app, but Turner says that “were it expensive, we wouldn’t be able to do it at the moment.”
Now I know what some of you are thinking, why can’t the BBC just use the photos people post to Twitter, the videos people upload to YouTube, and the blog posts that “citizen journalists” bang out in a hurry when there’s a significant event occurring like the recent events in Egypt? The answer here is quality, and by that we don’t mean to degrade the contribution that folks make with today’s social media tools, but the storytelling and fact finding skills that a journalist has spent years perfecting is a much more valuable asset than a blurry photo shared in a tweet.
It’s actually a shame that people these days are putting so much emphasis on being the first to cover a certain bit of news versus producing a well researched article with plenty of background information, but that’s another topic of discussion all together.