if james bond were a journalist

According to Ifra, “A primary task for Mobile NewsGear 2007 is to keep journalists at a remote news scene connected to each other, to the Internet and to the newspaper office.”

The latest and most high-tech NewsGear selection is a “complete mobile online newsroom built into a Volvo XC90” -- like a TV remote broadcast van, but designed to produce news in multiple formats. This will enable journalists to drive to a live event, shoot digital video, record broadcast-quality sound, work on print stories with a laptop, scan and print to PDF -- and send everything live to a newsroom or straight to the Internet.

At our chat session a few nights ago, my classmates Nanette and Marieton, and I discussed how much this souped-up Volvo looked like something straight out of a James Bond film or that 1980s TV series Knight Rider -- or Mission Impossible, for that matter. If this vehicle were to become the newsroom of the future, it would mean infinitely more mobility and speed for the journalist, who could report in any or all platforms at any time and from anywhere -- a far cry from the days when we would have to report back to the office to file a story after a coverage on the opposite end of the city.

This mobile newsroom would streamline tasks -- but not, as I mistakenly noted during the chat, necessarily cut costs. Dr. Quinn says in Convergent Journalism, content does not cut costs in the content-producing areas:

“…(s)ome editorial managers and publishers… think that multi-skilled journalists should potentially be able to produce more news for the same or little more money. They reason that their organizations should be able to cut costs because of increased productivity -- more multi-skilled reporting means the organization needs fewer reporters. This remains one of the most popular myths about convergence.”

Could the mobile newsroom eventually render the tickler, pen, and even voice recorder obsolete? Not before journalists are trained to function in a cross-platform environment. Or at least rid themselves of their technophobia.