The multi-function playground that is the smartphone has shrunk the capabilities of a van-sized 1970’s news team into the pocket of a single reporter. Today, front-page news can stream from any individual with a cell phone camera and a Twitter account, as it did during Iran’s election protests last summer. Today, major news outlets, such as CNN, have crowdsourced parts of their newsroom to locally-savvy citizen journalists, often armed with little more than a camcorder.

In addition to the standard smartphone equipment, such as a camera and social networking applications, we've compiled a list of five additional tools that can help a single journalist rival a fully-functional news team. With these tools, a mobile journalist can record data, edit clips, and broadcast polished stories as events unfold.

1. Voice Recorder/Google Voice

A smartphone microphone doubles as a remarkably good interviewing device. Built to filter out ambient noise, it can be held at a comfortable length from an interviewee's face or be left on a table. Best of all, cell phones are so ubiquitous that they seem less intrusive than bulky recording equipment. “[I]t was frightening for most people when a full TV crew was on site for an interview,” said Frank Barth Nilsen of Mojoevolution.com, a blog dedicated to mobile journalism. “It's not so frightening to be interviewed by a man or woman with only a cell phone. It's small and most people are used to being photographed by a cell phone.”

For times when face-to-face interviewing is not possible, Google Voice is a handy alternative for teleconferences. Subscribers to Google Voice are given a unique number, which forwards calls to a landline or cell phone, and stores voicemails on an easily accessible website. Perhaps the best feature is integrated voice-recording for inbound calls, and, like voice mail, the entire conversation can be retrieved from anywhere via the web.

In December, Apple approved its first live-streaming iPhone application, Ustream Broadcaster. Users of the popular video website Ustream can upload audio and video in real-time. In addition to streaming multimedia, you can now use Social Stream to integrate the experience into popular social media websites. Depending on the connection, Ustream Broadcaster can be pretty choppy. But, for breaking news, even lower-quality real-time video can send a powerful message.

Reeldirector is a video editing suite for the iPhone that can trim and join clips, add titles, and embed sound. Though editing on your phone for broadcast is probably not something journalists will need or want to do often, the app is perfect for creating a montage of short street interviews or key clips.











4. Fast Thumbs and Sync-able Memos

Why carry around a notebook and pen when a fully functional keyboard is always within arms reach? Though it takes some practice, thumb typing can record information as fast, if not faster, than traditional handwriting. Below are six super-fast typing tips from the world’s fastest texters.











Once you’ve typed-up a good story, you’ll want to make sure all that hard work is safe. Applications like Notespark and Evernote sync notes to a remote server so that even if your cell phone is lost while traveling, all your work is preserved.

In the age of the Internet, a breaking news story can be as much about publication speed as it is about quality journalism. With the WordPress application for the iPhone, journalists can patch together analysis and multimedia and post it to a blog without ever touching a computer. Even for journalists who rely on an editor to publish stories, a WordPress post can give an editor a working layout for how all the information should flow.







Conclusion

Today, everything a journalist needs to publish a story is only a few clicks away. In addition to speedy publication, inexpensive reporting allows less-endowed news outfits to blanket an area with more reporters. For instance, at Penn State, an unofficial campus newspaper, Onward State, is taking on the century-old university standby The Daily Collegian. According to sources at Onward State, a combination of mobile journalism and social media has helped the rogue publication become a competitor to the more established, award-winning official newspaper.

From college campuses to the streets of Tehran, a combination of low costs and hyper-local resourcefulness is democratizing the world of news journalism, putting the power of the press, literally, into the hands of every citizen.

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, MotoEd