But wait, maybe you can. CBC videojournalist Phonse Jessome shared this tip on his blog. His new Sony XDCAM has a cache mode that records continually but only saves the last few seconds of video before the record button is pushed. The number of seconds is variable up to 15; Jessome has his set at six.

Here’s an example of how it works. Jessome needed a shot of a motorcycle in traffic. Rather than roll on everything that passed by, he waits.

In this case when the bike rolls into the frame I hit record. The camera then adds video to the past six seconds it has already saved. So when I get back to the station I have the option of backing the shot up to the point where the bike enters the picture just before I actually hit record.

Why not leave the camera in cache mode all the time? “It burns more power and battery life is critical out here,” Jessome says. But in some situations, “cache is a game changer.”

Maybe you’ve known about and used this trick for ages, but I hadn’t seen it before. And I wanted to give Jessome a shout-out anyway for documenting what he does in the field and sharing what he learns along the way. He’s a daily news reporter based in Nova Scotia who shoots his own stuff and files for radio and the website, too, so it’s not like he has a ton of “spare time.”

Jessome’s From the Field Live blog has tips on everything from coping with changing light conditions to shooting when the wind chill is minus 20.

When you shoot in that kind of cold the tendency is to rush the shots to get back in the truck. In a word, don’t. You still need the same volume of quality material in an edit suite.

Jessome’s been sharing stories from the road since last November as part of his network’s effort to enhance its web presence. Worth the effort? From my perspective, absolutely.

Last year our news director challenged everyone to come up with new ideas for our newscasts. One suggestion I made was to recruit bloggers from the Houston community to do pieces on restaurants, lifestyle, and the arts. His response” Great idea. Why don’t you go out and do that?”

So, I did. And I decided that if I wanted  these stories to be exactly the way I wanted them, I was going to shoot, edit, and produce them myself.

I had already developed an interest in the use of DSLR equipment for news shooting, having seen it done more and more, especially by international news organizations like the BBC and Al Jazeera. And, I already had the equipment.

My basic setup:

• Canon Rebel T4i DSLR
• Canon 18-135 mm STM lens
• Rode NTG2 shotgun mic
• Tascam DR40 digital audio recorder
• F&V Z 96 LED light
• MacBook Pro 13″ w/ Final Cut Pro X

I now have a group of five local bloggers who suggest and set up stories that we air once a week on Fridays in our 9 p.m. newscast.

Most of my bloggers are food writers and many of the stories focus on restaurants and food events, although we have also done stories on everything from art exhibits to home design. The shoots usually take about two hours and it takes me about another two hours to edit the stories.

Here is what  I have discovered about shooting with this set-up:

Pros:

The cost:  For under $3500 I have a  set of gear that produces broadcast-quality video that also looks fantastic on the web.

The versatility:  With the ability to change lenses, I can create different looks depending on the story I am shooting.

The intimacy:  The set up is not nearly as intimidating as a full-blown broadcast camera setup. It allows me to work well in close quarters (like many restaurant kitchens). It is less intrusive when shooting a restaurant filled with customers.  I can see why several war correspondents use this type of setup to be quick, versatile, and not stand out in a crowd.

Cons:

Audio:  The built in audio in the camera is almost useless for any kind of serious shooting. There is also no easy way to monitor audio. You need an external mic to make this work. My two workarounds are either using a good shotgun mic plugged directly into the camera, or recording the audio separately on a digital audio recorder and then merging the audio with video during editing.

Speed:  I can’t see using this setup for quick turnarounds or breaking news.  Especially when I do interviews and record the audio using lav mics hooked into the digital audio recorder, it takes time to transcode the video and merge the video and audio before you can start editing.

Here’s a story I produced for Fox 26 using this gear:

I think anyone interested in having a low-cost option to produce stories that are not terribly time sensitive should look into shooting with a DSLR setup.  Especially in these days when there are more and more opportunities for  “entrepreneurial journalism” on the Web, the low cost of this type of setup allows people to strike out on their own.  Here’s an example. Daniel Klein of The Perennial Plate basically is a travel & food journalist who uses a setup similar to the one I use. He talked about his process in an interview with the New York Times

We’ve written about some of these apps before, but not lately, and things obviously change fast. So it was a pleasure to see today’s journalism chat on Twitter about iPhone reporting cover so many apps and options in one place.

Marc Blank-Settle of the BBC College of Journalism said he thinks it’s essential to get an XLR-mini adapter like this one so you can use an external microphone. But Neal Augenstein, who reports almost exclusively with his iPhone for WTOP Radio in Washington, DC, says he gets unacceptable digital noise from every external mic he’s tried (and he’s tried many) so he uses the built-in mic with a windscreen.

That said, Augenstein did have some caveats about using the iPhone’s microphone.

Augenstein uses Voddio, from Vericorder, for editing and uploading audio and video. He often uploads his stories from Vericorder to Soundcloud, making them easy to share. Here’s an everyday story, recorded and edited solely with his iPhone:

Other participants in the chat favor Audioboo, but Augenstein says it that because it does not allow for editing he hasn’t found it as useful.

Jeremy Rue of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism likes FiLMiC Pro for video.

Other participants mentioned:

ProCamera, which offers separate focus and exposure control for both photos and videos.

CamScanner, which converts documents to PDFs that can be emailed or uploaded to cloud storage. (GeniusScan is a similar app.)

Dragon Dictation, for transcription. Blank-Settle says it works pretty well if you speak slowly, but it’s not foolproof when it comes to transcribing interviews. Kim Fox of the American University in Cairo recommends the Transcribe plug-in for Chrome, but it’s not clear if it also works on mobile devices.

The BBC has been using Luci to report live from the field via iPhone. Here’s a how-to:

Still want to know more about mobile reporting? Check out this field guide from Berkeley, and follow the iPhone reporting adventures of Neal Augenstein on his Tumblr.

My favorite comment from the Twitter chat was Augenstein’s answer to the question of whether people take reporters seriously when they use just an iPhone. “I work in radio,” he said. “They never took me seriously anyway.”

Where are the dominant local TV news stations?  As one-time powerhouse stations struggled in the ratings, we asked a question that touched off the most active conversation on the site to date.

For journalists, almost nothing is just personal. Ethical issues can arise when journalists think their “private” lives really are private.

How to create an interactive timeline. A tutorial on how to use Dipity and Vuvox.

How to make a TV story memorable. Tips on reporting and writing from award-winning KARE reporter Boyd Huppert.

The best local TV stations to work for. Results of a survey of TV news directors judging their peers on the quality of their news.

TV news needs verbs. A heartfelt plea to revive the use of action words in television newscasts.

Why some longtime anchors get the boot. A reflection on the departure of some veteran news anchors.

The glamorous life of TV news. A humorous look at what it’s really like to work in TV news, complete with video.

Quick thinking gives iPhone telephoto lens. Your smartphone can do even more than you might imagine.

Tips on taking good notes. How to use your own shorthand and learn to leave out what’s not important.

One additional observation about what drew readers in 2012: Several older posts beat out new ones in our most-read list, including digital note-taking tools and  how to interview children. Our resource guides to journalism fellowships and grants and recommended journalism textbooks remain popular, as well.

We’ll try to provide more of what you’re looking for in 2013, and we’d be happy to have your support in the form of a donation. Remember, NewsLab has no outside funding whatsoever, so we have to depend on you to keep the site up and running. Thanks, and Happy New Year.

Other tools, like Vuvox, provide similar options for mashing up timelines and multimedia. Dipity also adds maps. Meograph might be a good fit for a broadcast newsroom’s online offerings because the tool makes it easy to add narration in short snippets, but the beta version has lots of issues that make it difficult to deal with.

A few limitations: Unlike Dipity, Meograph won’t let you use images from URLs. If you don’t have an image you can upload, you’re out of luck. The opposite issue exists for video. You can link to a YouTube video, but you can’t upload your own. On the plus side, you can easily trim YouTube videos to include just the part you want.

Something else to be aware of: you can only record 15 seconds of voice over using the built in narration function. Anything longer has to be recorded in some other program and uploaded. Not a deal breaker, but good to know before you get started. Meograph also requires you to save every “moment” as you go. Forgetting to do so can require lots of re-tracking. Other issues may be browser specific. I noticed in Chrome that adding a link to one “moment” added it to all others farther down the timeline, forcing me to go in to each one and add a blank link to get rid of it.

Here’s a quick tutorial:

If you’re willing to put up with the issues, the end result is quite attractive. You can see how it works in this demo Meograph put together to tell the Trayvon Martin story.

One final word of warning: the site went “down for maintenance” without warning while I was in the middle of building a presentation at 5 p.m. on a weekday–not something any newsroom wants to encounter on deadline.

I admit this review is not a rave, but Meograph is still worth a look. Let us know if you decide to try it out in your newsroom, and send us a link so we can see how it worked for you.

That’s obvious when it comes to big events like Hurricane Sandy. By one count, there were 3.5 million tweets with the hashtag #sandy in one 24 hour period, when the storm was clobbering the East Coast.

But hashtags can also serve you well day in and day out.

Stephen Clark is a main anchor at WXYZ, the Scripps station in Detroit, who is the driving force behind the #backchannel, a Twitter conversation that’s been underway for a couple of years now. How did it get started? Here’s the way Clark tells it:

The #backchannel draws thousands of uniques every month, according to Chip Mahaney, senior director of local digital operations for E. W. Scripps. “It is a lively robust and significant conversation that wouldn’t have been built without the newscast, and they’ve leveraged that conversation into real world connections.

“I think it has grown their audience,” Mahaney said.

The bottom line? If you’re on Twitter, good for you. But if you’re not using #hashtags on a regular basis, you’re missing a bet.

The result? “Nine hours of live streaming coverage. No live trucks. No ‘assigned’ reporters. No graphics people,” says Wood, who works for the Media General station in Greenville, S.C., WSPA.

We asked Wood to share her experience:

“Spreecast allows you to put up to four people on camera at a time (including the host) and post information and links on screen as lower third graphics. You can share YouTube videos for everyone to watch (so we had reporters post short updates there) and pictures with a URL address can be shared (we encouraged viewers to send their “I voted” sticker shots). The links that you post as lower thirds are clickable while you are live and in the replay after your event ends. And you can embed the video on your website.

“Using webcams, we brought our online audience lives shots from around the Carolinas: Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, Clemson, Spartanburg, Charlotte, Salisbury.

“Experts joined in from universities like Furman, Wofford, Clemson, Elon, USC Upstate, Catawba College and more. Three producers–one from our TV team, one community volunteer and a student volunteer from Clemson–helped line up the webcam guests, kept me in the loop for breaking news and selected the best comments.

“It was important for viewers to be able to ask questions and have a place to comment. But we wanted context. So I took a trip to Clemson’s Social Media Listening Center and worked out an arrangement to have exclusive access to their data, culled from 200 million sites, through Radian 6. The information proved to be insightful and predictive of the election outcome. Twice an hour a team of students shared information.

“It also helped us uncover election stories like the illegal ballot pictures, being taken by voters at the polls, and that trouble at the polls in some states had led to voting hours being extended.

“When the networks went to national coverage during our 11 p.m. show, we were able to carry on with our team of commentators online and close out our coverage.

“If you are a journalist, and want to do something more, if you want to bring your audience deeper coverage, you can do it. There’s nothing to stop you.

“It took a lot of time to develop the network of people who could join us on webcam. I spent at least thirty hours of personal time working it all out. Of the 60 plus I contacted close to 30 participated. And we’re now positioned, for the next time, to do it bigger and better.

“The Web is forgiving. It allows you to keep it real, to peel back the curtain. As you anchor and punch up the live shots yourself, you get to handle the glitches with humor and grace. It’s not supposed to be perfect, polished TV. It’s raw. It’s real-time. And that is what makes it so great.

“We know it worked: thousands joined us online posting thousands of comments. It was an engaging experience that we’ll try to repeat, not only for big elections but for any big story.”

WSPA was hardly the only station using the Web to extend its election coverage this year. Did you try something new? Care to share any lessons learned?

They check it thoroughly before and after every shoot. They supplement the standard-issue package with specialty items, from dimmers to clothespins to GoPros. They experiment and improvise, always on the hunt for new accessories that will save time or give them an edge on the competition.

Jonathan Malat of KARE-TV in Minneapolis, a two-time winner of the NPPA TV Photojournalist of the Year award, has his own collection of gadgets and gizmos that make the job go well. But only two of them are on his absolutely-must-have list. And he really means it.

If he couldn’t have those two items, he says, he simply couldn’t work.

So what are they?

Here’s a hint: one is for audio and one is for video.

How do you get to be good at photojournalism? You know how to get to Carnegie Hall, right? Practice, practice, practice. “You’ve got to know your camera,” Malat says. “Be so confident in your gear that you go to the next level and worry about the story, you don’t ever worry about the mechanics.” Practice every day with VO/SOTs and V/Os, Malat advises, until the technical part of the job becomes second nature.

Here’s a story Malat shot that won first place in the 2011 NPPA national competition.

If you’re not a believer, consider a few facts courtesy of the Poynter Institute’s Regina McCombs:

• Facebook is now the second or third largest source of traffic to online news sites.
• Facebook users are more politically engaged than most people and therefore more interested in news.
• Almost half of all Internet users re-post photos and videos–maybe even yours.

What that means, according to Chang, is that a TV story can have a whole new life online thanks to social media. And the potential audience is huge. KARE’s DMA has 1.7 million TV homes; the KARE Facebook page has just 57,000 likes. But those fans have more than 8 million friends, so when a story like the one about bald eagles is widely shared, its impact is magnified.

Instagram, the photo sharing service recently acquired by Facebook, has grown rapidly since it launched in 2010. As of July 2012, it had 80 million users.

At KARE, Helmke expects everyone in the newsroom to be adept at using social media but it took a little convincing to get some veterans to buy in. Reporter Boyd Huppert, who’s been in the business for 28 years, admits he was reluctant at first.

So what are you waiting for?

Ad Hawk, free from the Sunlight Foundation, uses sound recognition technology to quickly identify the source of political ads on television.

The Super-PAC App goes a step farther. It not only identifies the source via sound recognition but also links to background on the ad’s truthfulness from PolitiFact, FactCheck.org and other sources. And it’s free, too. PolitiFact offers its own app with all of its truth-check comparisons for $1.99. FactCheck.org doesn’t have an app but does have a mobile site.

If you’re covering the political conventions, CNN and Time have teamed up to create a free Convention Floor Pass app with breaking news, a calendar and a social hub. And both parties are offering apps for the firs time: Tampa 2012 for the Republicans, and DNC 2012 for the Democrats.

To stay up to date on poll results in the presidential race, consider PollTracker from TPM (Talking Points Memo), which pulls data from lots of sources and creates a trend chart.

Need to keep track of electoral math? For a dollar, 270toWin provides an interactive electoral map that highlights battleground states and lets you plug in scenarios to calculate possible outcomes. A similar app is available for free from Fox News (You Decide 2012 Map). And to think I used to lug a huge briefing book from coast to coast!

What are your favorite apps for political coverage? Chime in!