How ‘MoJo’ is helping journalists to report from hard-to-reach areas

Mobile journalism (known to those in the business as MoJo) is quickly becoming one of the most-used ways to create journalism, as well as one of the most consumed mediums.  

The idea behind MoJo is that journalists can captures videos, take pictures, record audio, and edit their material on a single mobile device – namely a smartphone.  

In a 2017 white paper written by Paul Kahunen, eleven journalists from across the field were interviewed about their experience with MoJo. Kahunen found two major points.  

“Firstly, it is easier to move around with smaller and lighter newsgathering devices, Secondly, a mobile journalist can just shoot and edit a story on a smartphone and send it to a newsroom or social media.” 

He also noted how journalists could easily live-stream events without having to connect to satellites. 

MoJo has spread across many different mediums, including online, broadcast and newspaper journalism. 

A great example of this is Hits Radio, based in Manchester. Apart from their on-air reports, all radio reporters at Hits must also produce a piece-to-camera video and edit it for social media using an iPhone, something they wouldn’t have been expected to do before smartphones existed. 

84 year old Lawrence Franks from #Gatley has been spared jail for the manslaughter of his ill wife. Our reporter @AbiSmitton is at #Manchester Crown Court pic.twitter.com/n0i6U91HaT

— Hits Manchester News (@hitsmcrnews) November 22, 2018

It's not just in the mainstream media that MoJo is gaining traction. Kahunen’s paper also looked at how MoJo is making way for more ‘hyper-local’ journalism – news on a smaller, more local scale. 

Part of the reasoning behind this is the costs involved with MoJo: newsrooms can now afford to employ more reporters because mobile equipment is much cheaper, and journalists are able to capture material and cover stories on their own without a cameraman. 

Another area where MoJo is coming to the fore is in countries where restrictions on the media are breaking down.  

In a recent article for Journalism.co.uk, Björn Staschen and Wyste Vellinga detailed how MoJo is helping new journalists in Myanmar, where freedom of the press was previously limited under a military regime. 

In 2014, the BBC began a ‘MoElJo’ (mobile election journalism) programme in the country to train journalists on how to cover elections using Android smartphones, as they didn’t have the capital to buy cameras. 

Staschen and Vellinga said: “Mobile journalism enables journalists there (among them are many bloggers) to be a free independent voice that exists next to public broadcasting for the first time.” 

A 2017 training document from Al Jazeera titled ‘Mobile Journalism’ talks about how MoJo can help keep journalists safe; using a mobile phone rather than heavy recording equipment makes them “less noticeable and better able to blend in with the crowd”. 

An example they use is their 2012 documentary ‘Syria: Songs of Defiance’, which was the outlet’s first documentary to be shot entirely using an iPhone.  

The film followed a journalist covering the uprising in Syria and speaking to local people at a time when Al Jazeera journalists had been banned from the country and the regime was targeting reporters who were covering the conflict.

“By using a smartphone, the undercover journalist was able to gather images the world otherwise wouldn’t have been able to see.” 

MoJo is helping journalists to get a start in the field where mainstream journalism can be restrictive, and with the availability of smartphones ever increasing, there’s no sign of MoJo slowing down any time soon.