iPhoneReporting: NealAugenstein

Posts tagged mobile

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Silence is golden. And embarrassing.

It’s happened to every reporter — you attempt to play back a recorded interview, and have the horrible realization you failed to capture the audio.

Here’s how to avoid that moment of anger, frustration, and shame if you’re reporting on your iPhone.

First, in Settings, turn ON Airplane Mode, which will prevent your phone from ringing during your recorded interview.

Once you begin recording audio, you can lock your iPhone in Record On by doing something that seems counterintuitive — touching the On-Off button on the top of the iPhone.

Your screen will actually go dark, and you’ll likely think “oh no, I turned off my phone.”

Yet, when you touch the Home button to ‘revive’ your phone, you’ll see your audio app has continued to run in the background while the screen was dark and your audio has been safely recorded.

So simple, yet so important.

Filed under iphone reporting neal augenstein wtop editing mobile on off

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Declaring independence — from laptops, bags full of cumbersome radio broadcast gear, and perhaps most important, ‘the way it’s always been done.’ iPhone Reporting provides liberty, for those forward-thinkers willing to embrace both the benefits and challenges it poses. Comparison to work produced by journalists using full-size and function gear is inevitable and helpful, but is often comparing apples to oranges. I estimate the audio quality of the built-in microphone of the iPhone4 to be 92-percent as good as that recorded with my Shure SM63 into a Marantz PMD620. While some might argue “the listener will notice the difference,” I assure you a well-produced iPhone Reporting wrap, including your voice track, newsmakers, and natural sound will be almost aurally identical to the report filed by a journalist carrying traditional gear. Yet, the iPhone Reporter can also provide cropped photos, edited video, and social networking — without having to find, set-up, boot-up, and dub from another device. Publisher and broadcast media mogul Walter Annenberg once said “I cannot compromise or inhibit my independence.”   I think he’d agree compromise as a way of achieving independence is a goal worth working toward.

Declaring independence — from laptops, bags full of cumbersome radio broadcast gear, and perhaps most important, ‘the way it’s always been done.’

iPhone Reporting provides liberty, for those forward-thinkers willing to embrace both the benefits and challenges it poses. Comparison to work produced by journalists using full-size and function gear is inevitable and helpful, but is often comparing apples to oranges.

I estimate the audio quality of the built-in microphone of the iPhone4 to be 92-percent as good as that recorded with my Shure SM63 into a Marantz PMD620.

While some might argue “the listener will notice the difference,” I assure you a well-produced iPhone Reporting wrap, including your voice track, newsmakers, and natural sound will be almost aurally identical to the report filed by a journalist carrying traditional gear.

Yet, the iPhone Reporter can also provide cropped photos, edited video, and social networking — without having to find, set-up, boot-up, and dub from another device.

Publisher and broadcast media mogul Walter Annenberg once said “I cannot compromise or inhibit my independence.”  

I think he’d agree compromise as a way of achieving independence is a goal worth working toward.

Filed under iphone, reporting, neal, augenstein wtop mobile journalism