By Caroline Grass
November 9, 2023
The technology given to us for Mobile and Social Journalism during the Fall 2023 semester. Our backpack kits included an iPad mini, tripod, microphone and additional camera lenses (Photo by Caroline Grass).
A multimedia journalist is someone who can produce a cohesive and compelling story from start to finish by themselves. They are tech-savvy and use social media for all aspects of their story from newsgathering to promoting their articles.
Is it ideal that journalists are thrown into the field alone and asked to report solo? No, but it is the reality we are living in and as a young journalist entering the field in the next two years, I feel that I need to be equipped to pitch, interview, take photos, shoot videos, edit, publish and promote alone to find a job out of college and do it well.
There are pros and cons to this model of largely solo journalism work. A positive is that journalists have the freedom to cover what they feel is important and cover it how they want. Editors are still a part of the process and they can always say, ‘No I don’t like this’ or edit parts of your piece that you might really like, but often a journalist is told to run with a story and come back with a product. At the end of the day, I think that may be a good thing because no one knows a story and beat as well as the journalist covering it does.
While journalistic independence can be a positive, lack of oversight, guidance and mentorship in the field is also an issue. Young journalists benefit from working in teams with veterans and other journalists who can teach them skills they might not know. Additionally, stories with multiple people working on it will have more dimension and have a better shot at being a nuanced story.
That’s not to say a journalist can’t produce a well-rounded, impactful story alone, but editors and teams are critically important to ensure a story isn’t one-sided or repetitive. Journalists are people who are passionate about topics and have bias and while in the profession we strive to report fairly and come at stories from multiple perspectives, it is easy to fall into comfortable habits and rely on what we know, highlighting the need for oversight and help.
Being a multimedia journalist means you have to do it all on a day-to-day basis, but it is important to remember that we don’t know everything and asking for help and working with others can help create stronger journalism for our audience to read. Newsrooms, while operating on tighter budgets every day, need to continue to allocate time and resources to give their journalists the support they need to report well.
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