Multimedia reporters, citizen journalists

I’M happy to announce that we’ve hired our first multimedia reporter, who will focus on taking video clips for INQUIRER.net and working on all the exciting stuff we have in store for you from our Editorial department’s multimedia division, which we only set up this year when I got my new position as gaming and multimedia editor.

It took longer than we expected, and INQUIRER.net editor in chief JV Rufino, executive editor Leo Magno and I found ourselves agreeing that we needed someone young, someone who lived and breathed blogs and online video sites such as YouTube but who at the same time was very much grounded in the tenets of journalism. It was difficult to get someone because the position demanded a person who could be both the reporter and cameraman, someone who could be comfortable in front of and behind the camera. And it had to be someone who didn’t think of video in terms of TV, but instead belonged to the YouTube generation.

I’ll save my thoughts on the challenges reporters face in the age of citizen journalism, and the need for everyone to learn to become a multimedia journalist or risk becoming obsolete for a future blog post.

Today, I’d like to welcome Erika Tapalla to the INQUIRER.net team. You’ll see more of Erika and her work in the days ahead.

And speaking of citizen journalists, here’s the latest episode of The Newsmaker Podcast, our news and current affairs podcast hosted by Leo Magno. You can check out the audio podcast here.

In this episode, Solomon Dador, who uses the nickname Disney, recounts where he was during the Glorietta 2 mall blast in Makati City and how the photos this ordinary citizen took and uploaded to his website had an extraordinary impact on people and even news agencies all over the world.

And here’s the vidcast — the video was taken by Erika.

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