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jurvetson, via Flicker (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license)
If you like smart phones, there are plenty to choose from. (Click for a version of this photo with mouseover details on each model shown.) |
A little while back I got a call from
Kevin Coughlin, reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger. He said his paper's management is urging reporters to become more techno-savvy, so he was calling some journalistic technophiles to find out which tools and services are especially useful to working reporters.
His questions triggered a memory for me about something I observed at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference this past October. While there were plenty of laptops in view at the conference, I noticed an amazing number of longtime reporters whipping out various brands of smart phones and using them for diverse tasks: taking notes, performing online searches, Web surfing, recording contact information, noting events on calendars, messaging with editors, recording audio and video, taking pictures, checking e-mail and feeds, and more. Occasionally, they even used them to place phone calls.
I was surprised because I've known many of these smart-phone-wielding reporters for a decade or more, and several of them are rather, um, technophobic. At least, they used to be. But something about smart phones seems to suit them -- maybe even better than laptops.
One thing's for sure: A really great smart phone costs a lot less than most laptops. That might be attractive to news organizations -- or reporters who are paying out of their pockets for better gear.
What have you observed? Are smart phones more attractive to old-school reporters than laptops? Please comment below.
...Oh, and if you want to read about a smart phone that's not a brick, see Steve Outing's recent post, Me and My (Little) Crackberry.
And right after I made that post, I saw a...
