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FORT MEYERS, Fla., Dec 4, 2006 (UPI via COMTEX) -- There's a new breed of reporters in Florida who literally spend all of their time on the road looking for stories and filing them through high-tech tools.
The Washington Post reported Monday that this fleet of "mobile journalists," called "mojos" is outfitted with laptops and digital cameras but don't have an office or even a desk to call their own.
The mojos at the Fort Myers (Fla.) News-Press spend their time in the field looking for stories for the newspaper's Web site and for the print edition, too.
The Post said their "guiding principle" is to have a constantly updated stream of fresh, local news; they're calling it the "key to building online and newspaper readership."
The car-dwelling news hounds out there writing the "hyper-local" street-by-street news are an integral part of an experiment being floated by their corporate parent, McLean, Va.-based Gannett, which is trying in these times of fewer newspaper readers and subscribers, to figure out how to stay alive.
Is it working? The News-Press's Web site's hits have gone from 58,000 visitors per week in 2002 to 140,000 visitors per week this year, the Post said.
URL: www.upi.com Copyright 2006 by United Press International
