profile of a likely freelance journalist of the future. Thanks to the BBC’s Paul Brannan for the link. Note that Jason Motlagh, the freelancer, has multi-media skills. Mojo has to be among those skills.

Have just found this YouTube video about how to be a mojo. It is simplistic, but provides the basics on how to get video to YouTube.

This interview is with a freelance journalist just returned from Iran. Reece Erlich says the uprisings are not fuelled by Twitter because the majority of people in Iran do not have access to Twitter. Indeed the authorities have slowed the web and shut down access to sites like Twitter and Facebook.

YouTube’s blog reports that uploads from mobile phones to YouTube jumped by 1,700 per cent in the first half of 2009. And since Friday 19 June 2009, when the iPhone 3GS came out, uploads increased by 400 per cent a day. Thanks to DJ Clark on Twitter for alerting me to the blog post.

This Toolkit for citizen journalists, available free as a pdf, and with videos on the web site, will be useful to some mojos. 

A charming story about how a TV producer, Gio Benitez, used an iPhone to report on the number of people queuing to get a new iPhone in Florida. Watch the story in the same link, in the top right-hand corner.

Further evidence of the potential of the mobile phone and digital tools like Twitter for reporting in Iran, in this report from the UK. See my earlier piece on this phenomenon.

It’s a cliche, but the protests in Iran surely demonstrate further the power of the mobile phone in the hands of so-called amateurs. Especially given the fact almost all Western reporters have left Tehran. Big-name media such as CNN have eagerly displayed “amateur” photographs. 

Meanwhile, in relation to my previous post, Helen AS Popkin of MSNBC writes an intelligent article about how people are using technology in countries with limited freedom of expression. Apologies, also, for the lack of updating of this blog. Have been in Norway and very busy with other things in life.

Channel One TV, a Los Angeles-based satellite station  run by expatriate Iranians, mailed thousands of camera pens to citizens in Iran to help them document their election. The pens pull apart to reveal a flash drive that plugs into a computer for uploading video. Not exactly mojo, but a fascinating example of how technology is being used for reporting.

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