During primary season in New Hampshire, video blogger Steve Garfield heard of the whereabouts of Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter and scooped CNN to an important announcement by broadcasting a live interview with his cell phone. Likewise, at a rally for Barack Obama in Boston, he used his cell phone to give viewers a crowd-eye view of the gathering, ending his broadcast next to a C-Span cameraman.
The time has come when a newspaper reporter can pull out a miniature video camera from her pocket and instantly live stream video to a newspaper’s Web site from wherever she is — in a field, from city hall, or on a campaign bus. Garfield has been shooting such video for more than a year using just a Web-enabled cell phone and a simple Web application.
The benefits of such a capability are obvious. Reporters can gather video reports whenever and wherever they are, unhindered by the constraints of bulky or expensive equipment. Viewers can watch real-time news unfold while journalists gather material for a Web or print story.
At last, smaller newspapers can compete with their larger print and broadcast rivals at minimal expense.
And, Garfield says, there is one additional advantage—cell phones are so small that interviewees quickly forget they are there.
“If I shoot with a big camera, lights and a mic, people are conscious of all the equipment,” Garfield says. “But people I interview on my cell phone will often give a more personal story. They aren’t talking to the camera or ‘being on TV.’ I just start it and they talk.”
Garfield often sets out on an assignment with no preconceived idea of a story or an angle. He walks the streets or hangs around places he believes something worth recording might happen. He calls his method “reporting by wandering around” or “happenstance broadcasting.”
Live-casting is so easy that it has been stripped down to two simple components: a cell phone capable of steaming video and a hosting service that will handle the stream. And both are becoming more ubiquitous with each passing day.
Garfield’s camera is a Nokia N 95-3 phone, which retails for around $500. To stream video, he uses a Web application called Qik, which is still in an early testing phase. Companies are launching new cell phones and live-casting applications all the time.
The Fresno Bee is an early convert to Qik. Jennifer Ward, the newspaper’s assistant managing editor (interactive media), says staff have only been using the application for a few months but it is already proving a valuable tool, especially for covering press conferences and visual stories like traffic accidents.
The Fresno Bee’s main competitor is local TV. And since most people do not have access to television at work, live broadcasting on the Web is a good way for the newspaper to be competitive in its market.
“I have been calling it my $30,000 satellite truck that sits in my pocket,” says Ward. “I haven’t been this excited about technology since I bought my first laptop a decade ago. The possibilities of this thing are amazing.”
But the Fresno Bee does not use video as an alternative to textual reporting. Instead, video is seen as a complimentary format and is usually embedded in a story after it has been broadcast live.
When a local high school signed a new football coach the Fresno Bee was able to cover the press conference live via cell phone. Editors alerted readers of the broadcast via email about one hour in advance. And a Fresno Bee photographer operated the cell phone camera while the reporter concentrated on the meeting. Meanwhile, an editor at the Fresno Bee offices made sure the headline and description accompanying the live video was correct. Once the report of the meeting was published on the Web site, the video of the 21-minute press conference was embedded in the story.
Live-casting is so easy that it has been stripped down to two simple components: a cell phone capable of steaming video and a hosting service that will handle the stream. And both are becoming more ubiquitous with each passing day.
Because Qik is still in an early phase, new functions are being added each week. And the Fresno Bee is still working out kinks. Initial challenges have included poor audio and video content during a mayoral debate because the cell phone was too far from the action, and poor sound quality during a court case because the defendant had his back to the camera.
“That is one of the drawbacks of using a cell phone,” says Ward. “It can be very limiting.” To solve the audio problem, Ward is trying to invent a way of plugging a cell phone into an audio board at press conferences.
Garfield, meanwhile, says despite these challenges, the quality of live casts is much better than most people expect, though he admits that Qik contacted him after seeing his New Hampshire broadcast and offered to replace his old phone with a Nokia N95-3 (the N95-3 works with AT&T’s 3G network and therefore produces the best results). Nevertheless, he says the sound quality is so good that he rarely uses the clip-on mic that comes as standard with most cell phones.
“A lot of people have the impression of video on the net being lousy, but most of the quality is really amazing,” says Garfield. “If you are close enough to the microphone, the sound is going to be very good.”
Garfield is also impressed with Qik’s ability to allow viewers to communicate with the cameraman via Web chat during a broadcast. In theory, newspapers could use this function to allow viewers and editors to send questions to a reporter while an interview is taking place.
Indeed, one of the only problems Garfield has come across in his reporting is that the equipment is so basic that people often do not realize what they are getting themselves in to when they agree to an interview.
“I haven’t been this excited about technology since I bought my first laptop a decade ago. The possibilities of this thing are amazing.”
-- Jennifer Ward, The Fresno Bee
On the day of the New Hampshire Primary, for example, Garfield waited outside a polling station and asked to interview departing voters on his phone. One person agreed, but when Garfield switched on his cell phone and started asking questions, the man became angry and asked not to be recorded.
“I thought, ‘Jeez, that just went out live,’” says Garfield. So he logged into his Qik account and deleted the video. “Now I make sure I am very clear. I say, ‘Can I interview you on video with this camera?’”
Qik automatically sents out a Twitter message to alert viewers that Garfield is broadcasting live. He suggests that newspapers might want to do the same as well as sending an email to readers. Additionally, he suggests they plug upcoming broadcasts at the end of print and online stories.
Garfield broadcasts his reports via a live page on his Web site. When he finishes broadcasting, Steve manually uploads his video to YouTube, and his Qik account automatically uploads the video to a number of sites, such as his Justin.tv channel.
He advocates that rather than forcing viewers to view content on one Web site, it is better to distribute it throughout a number of sites to attract the largest possible audience. He cites the example of CBS, which recently decided to distribute its content on a range of Web sites.
“By giving content away you get back more,” says Garfield. “But by keeping content in a closed area, all you have is your existing readers.”
In general, Ward agrees. She says she would not mind if local bloggers embedded the Fresno Bee’s live video on their own sites as long as they include a link back to www.fresnobee.com. But she says she would like to see Qik add a function so that newspapers can embed their own logo and title screen on videos. “If other people find our feed relevant enough to embed on their Web site it gets our content out there to more of my readers,” says Ward. “And that’s my goal in life.”