How To Do Journalism In The Time of Corona

Posted March 23, 2020

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The TV news business finds themselves in a quandry.

It is important to keep people informed.

It is important to stay on the air.

It is important to cover the news and produce stories.

But how do you do that without putting your reporters at risk?

Television journalism requires going into the field and getting the stories, but does it also require getting the virus?  Health workers risk their lives every day, but they have to be there.  How to handle video and television journalism when the best way to work is to work from home.

At Spectrum1 in LA, they are trying some novel approaches with some interesting results. 

At Spectrum1, most of the MMJs shoot with an iPhone.

Well, everyone else has an iPhone as well. That means that the people who are living at home and now sequestering at home, have the same gear as the MMJs.

That's an opportunity.

An opportunity to let people tell their own stories, working with the MMJs online.

It's a new kind of journalism, but one that has enormous potential, even after this nightmare is open.

Spectrum1 has unleashed an entirely new kind of journalism.

Not quite DIY, more of a kind of colaberation between the people who have a story to tell and those who know how to tell a story.

Above, Spectrum1' MMJ Itay Hod and an Angeleno who is trapped in Argentina.

It works

And it's but the tip of an enromous iceberg with enormous potential. 

After all, it has been feeding Facebook and Instagram for years

And they have not done badly at all