Early adopters' experiences of using mobile multimedia phones in news journalism

Today’s mobile multimedia phones with broadband connectivity have brought novel ways for journalists to live out their hectic profession. We interviewed six forerunners in Finnish news organizations on mobile phone usage in news production. Here, we present our results on how and why they use mobile phones in news production and provide implications for design and development. Our results show that users are delighted to use mobile phones in journalistic work if they can gain personal benefits from it, like more efficient use of time. Participants were not satisfied with the audio quality of mobile phones or mobile text editors. However, they considered mobile phones suitable for capturing short Internet videos. One reason constricting mobile production is editorial processes that are not designed for receiving material produced with a mobile phone. This causes extra work both in the newsroom and in the field.