Print and broadcast media converge on mobile

Is the Manchester Evening News still a newspaper? I only ask because I don't think Paul Gallagher - talking to news:rewired on Skype from Manchester - mentioned anything about a newspaper.

He's head of online at the paper and his presentation made clear that the Manchester Evening News is no longer confined to Manchester or the evening, and perhaps it has never restricted itself to news. (In fact, it's "the country's largest circulating daily regional newspaper", according to its parent company MEN Media.)

When online media first came along more than a decade ago, journalists working for broadcasters found themselves writing stories for websites - and needing to check their spelling after deciding on a spelling-free career in radio or TV.

The reverse process, of journalists used to writing for print media moving into audio and video, took a little longer, but there's no question it is now complete.

Gallagher described how, about 18 months ago, all MEN reporters were given Nokia N8 phones and told to go and report in whatever way they could. It seems like a thousand flowers have bloomed:

- Video uploaded by journalists has attracted some of MEN's largest online audiences - 16,000 recently, for instance, for what Gallagher, with refreshing candour, described as "essentially a 30-second clip of some police tape".

It's a slow, two-way pan, to the sound of traffic noise. The reason viewers were so curious is that this was the scene of a gruesome murder.

- Stills from the Nokia phones are another source of content. During recent protests, 16 MEN journalists sent back 109 pictures from across the city, which produced 12,000 online views.

- Live blogging from every council meeting has become a feature of MEN reporting. Reporters can also curate content, pulling in other social media input for their reports.

- Audio can be used for interviews, using Audioboo

- Geotagging allows the tracking of reporters ("not to keep tabs on them", Gallagher hastened to add). But a reporter's live journey through a transport trouble spot, for instance, can be tracked on the website.

And there's still more to come: Gallagher said he wants to develop livestreaming from mobiles using Bambuser. Early experiments have included sending a reporter up onto the roof to film a sunset which people had been commenting on.

"We're only at the beginning of using mobile phones for newsgathering," said Gallagher.

The idea that newspapers and broadcasters are converging in mobile technology was vividly demonstrated when the next speaker turned out to be Sky News correspondent Nick Martin, who gave an impressive demo of how he now reports using... a mobile phone.

Footage from the sessions at news:rewired is being filmed by the College of Journalism and will be posted on this website shortly. You can also follow the sessions during the day on the College of Journalism Twitter account.