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Online Journalism News

US newspaper uses mobile phone to stream video of Olympic torch protests

Posted: 11/04/08 By: Oliver Luft
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US newspaper The Sacramento Bee has been using mobile phone technology to relay video of protests against the Olympic torch procession, in San Francisco, in real time.

By using Qik, a technology that allows live streaming from videophones to a flash player embedded on a website or blog, reporters were able broadcast moving images as events unfolded - effectively replicating a live TV news service at a fraction of the cost and with the flexibility to move freely and quickly.

Reporter Manny Cristomo captured street-level action of clashes between supporters of China and Tibet, as well as the general turmoil of an event that took an unexpected series of twists, with a mobile phone mounted on his DV camera.

image of sacbee video website

Images captured by the videophone were automatically relayed by the Qik technology for live broadcast on its website.

Desk staff were then able to download the content and add it to the newspaper's own video player (right) as an immediate account of events.

Higher quality video shot on location on the dedicated digital camera could then be edited and added sometime later.

"Our goal is to try and create an immediacy for our online video, it's [using Qik) experimental, we have been using it for just the last two weeks," Mark Morris, the Bee's director of multimedia, told Journalism.co.uk.

"We see it as a way of posting editorial content immediately online, I think we had something posted on our site within 15 minutes of everything being transmitted into Qik."