Ryan's Writings…at Mason

In Mark Briggs’ fifth chapter of “Journalism Next,” Briggs discusses how mobile appears to be the future of journalism.

People are having most – if not all of their content – going directly to their smartphones, so journalists need to keep up with the audience’s mobility by entering the world of mobile journalism.

Smartphones are like having a camera and a laptop bundled up into a hand-held device that can also function as a regular cell phone. With the added Internet access, smartphones can really do just about anything.

Especially for journalists.

Now, we can take pictures and videos of breaking news and post them, with 140-character captions, on Twitter or Facebook in less than 10 minutes.

Because of mobile journalism, anyone with a smartphone can beat the national news agencies when it comes to getting first-hand information about breaking news – and they can publish it faster.

But now that we have the ability to publish content in just minutes, that leaves me to ask the question: What next?

We have already done what seemed to be impossible just 10 years ago, so what’s next for journalism now that everything is literally at our fingertips?