The Mobile Storytelling Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Things are changing in the Mobile Storytelling world. Not only are getting phones more expensive. Also essential apps are switching to subscription models oder raising their prices steeply. Is the the end to the promise that mobile storytelling makes video journalism affordable to anyone who has a story to tell?

Tipps and tricks on how to tell your story with your smartphone - for journalists, podcasters, experts and everyone who´s got something to tell.

The smartphone is the ultimate storytelling tool - for journalists, filmmakers, podcasters and all the other inhabitants of the smartphone universe. In this podcast the journalists Björn Staschen and Wytse Vellinga share alle the tipps and tools based on their 2018 handbook "Mobile Storytelling". They talk to well-known journalists who know the technology well and reflect current developments.

Subscribe to this podcast for all the latest apps, gear and mobile storytelling news. #journalism #filmmaking #podcasting #radio #tv

Find the hosts on Twitter: @WytseVellinga or @bjoernsta

Intro and Outro music (c) Arnav Srivastav - River Lounge (Get it on www.909music.com) via Soundcloud.com

One year after recording the last episode of The Mobile Storytelling Podcast Björn Staschen and Wytse Vellinga met up in London to record a very special (and short) episode of the podcast at the 2022 MoJoFest. For the first time since the start of the pandemic the #mojo world got to meet up again. A new beginning, but also a bit of an ending. Intrigued? Wait until you hear the end of this podcast...

“My passion is editing. To design an app for editing is like editing to me." Teri Morgan is the Co-Founder of Luma Touch, the company behind the iOs-App "Luma Fusion". - A podcast about listening to users, start-up culture and agility: Many believe Luma Fusion it is the best and unrivalled editing app for storytellers on iPhones. But how did Luma Touch manage to devolop such an unrivalled market leader? Teri tells us about her passion. "When non-linear editing started, the good old boys said: This is never gonna take of," she remembers. "But I started reading every page of the manual." Working at Luma Touch is "the most fun I ever had in my life" she tells us in our podcast. And she shares some thoughts about future developments and updates.

“My God, I didn´t know my phone could do that!" Glen Mulcahy still gets this reaction, nearly a decade after he started training journalists in how to tell a story with their smartphone. Glen started a movement: He founded the "Mobile Journalism Conference" (later turned into "MojoFest"). He even left his job as technology lead with the Irish public-service broadcaster RTE to concentrate on bringing mobile journalism to journalists worldwide. "The smartphone poses a chance and a danger to journalism at the same time, the volume of content being produced these days is a gift and a curse, all in one go." "Stop worrying about office space," he tells media companies during the #corona pandemic, "but build a completely mobile eco system." By this, journalism could become the lifeblood of a community again.

“You want to be as invisible as possible." During the corona pandemic, RAI-3-journalist Nico Piro has reported from Italy´s hotspots. He was one of the first TV reporters to film in an emergency hospital built during the crisis in Bergamo - with his smartphone. "In such a hospital, there´s pain, there´s suffering", he tells us in our podcast. "So you don´t want to invade the place." His smartphone was small enough for him to blend into the surrounding, to respect difficult situation patients and staff were in. An the phone was easy enough to clean after working in a ward with a high viral charge. Before corona, Nico has worked as foreign correspondent for the TG 3 news programme covering the war in Afghanistan and other areas of the world - partly also with his smartphone. The important thing for him: It´s the story that counts, and the smartphone is one tool to tell a story. He also thinks the phone is great for beginners to learn their ropes in journalism.

There is a time when a sock might play an important role in mobile journalism. It´s not our trick, but it´s a good trick! And it´s one of the tricks, ideas and thougts we have gathered around microphones in this edition of the mobile storytelling podcast: How good are the mics build into your phone? Which mics are the ones you should buy if you´re on a budget and have money to spend for one microphone? What mics do you need for video interviews, which ones for podcasts? Wytse and Bjoern have collected their thoughts on microphones in this 3rd edition of the Mobile Storytelling Podcast.

"For them, Mobile Storytelling really makes a difference." Sara Hteit is training young refugees in Lebanese camps in how to tell their story with their smartphone. Her trainings are funded by Deutsche Welle Academy, and some of her trainees even ended up working as journalists for media outlets in Lebanon. "We´re not only giving them a voice, we´re giving them hope, a purpose for what to do in live," she tells us in the third episode of our podcast. Her target group don´t own fancy iPhone models: "Mobile Journalism" in refugee camps means filming with an old Android phone, often without any accessories. With Covid-19, the situation has worsened: "Right now, our trainees in the camps are really struggling." Their smartphones become means of telling lockdown stories - and Sara herself can only be in touch via WhatsApp or video call as Lebanon has introduced strong Corona rules as well.

"Recording into the couch might get you the best result." Nick Garnett is a legend in mobile reporting. He has been using his iPhone 3 GS to go live for the BBC more than a decade ago, and since then he has hardly done anything else than reporting from where the stories happened. In the first episode of the Mobile Storytelling Podcast, he shares his best tipps and tricks on how to report indepentendly from whereever you are - like not sitting on the couch but talking into it for better sound . We also asked Nick about his views on how journalism is changing during the #Corona pandemic and if home production with mobile tools finally sees its breakthrough: "We won't go back to working the way we did before."

The smartphone is the ultimate storytelling tool - for journalists, filmmakers, podcasters and all the other inhabitants of the smartphone universe. In this podcast the journalists Björn Staschen and Wytse Vellinga share alle the tipps and tools based on their 2018 handbook "Mobile Storytelling". They talk to well-known journalists who know the technology well and reflect current developments.   Subscribe to this podcast for all the latest apps, gear and mobile storytelling news. #journalism #filmmaking #podcasting #radio #tv   Find the hosts on Twitter: @WytseVellinga or @bjoernsta   Intro and Outro music (c) Arnav Srivastav - River Lounge (Get it on www.909music.com) via Soundcloud.com

Spanish journalist Leonor Suarez used her mobile phone to cover the Spanish Civil War. Not the real event off course, but a reenactment of the 1930’s war for a documentary. How did she experience being a director, cameraman and journalist at the same time? And what were the challenges in working on the phone?