Smart ways to use dumb phones

Last year, during New York City’s massive snow storm, it was with the power of cell phones and the crowd that WNYC Radio was able to report in a thorough way and break news about the slow response by city officials.

Right now, there are no sessions at ONA about use of the device that virtually everybody has — the mobile phone. Most cell phone users in the country, especially in rural and lower-income areas, do not have smart phones (only a third of cell phones are “smart,” according to Pew) and if journalists don’t find ways to innovate with regularly feature phones, then they’re missing a huge swath of the population.

This is an appeal for a talk about smart ways to use phones that are otherwise dumb. A discussion about this powerful, but simple (some would say old-fashioned!) method would be helpful knowledge that other journalists could take home and would lead to more innovation in the newsroom.

Jim Colgan is Head of Mobile News at Mobile Commons and has presented at conferences in the US and Europe, including with Hacks/Hackers New York and The New York Times.

Photo by Annie Mole on Flickr