Mojo has taken on a new meaning in media these days. Mobile journalists, or “mojos,” are staff journalists who are not tethered to a newsroom desk but are free to roam about searching and documenting – and even posting – news from the field with a broadband connection and digital devices, including cameras, camcorders and laptop computers.
Since the term was coined three years ago as code name for a pilot project for the News-Press, a Gannett newspaper in Fort Meyers, Fla, it has started now to take hold in community LGBT newspapers. It is a natural progression for hard copy newspapers for a number of reasons, partially as outgrowth of the social focus on sustainability and cutting commutes, in an effort to get an upper hand in quickly posting online news coverage or, especially in these economic times, as a cost cutting measure to avoid expensive brick-and-mortar office overhead.
It’s not often that one tactic can provide multiple benefits of upping a company’s cost savings, social responsibility and competitive edge.
So, it made sense when Chicago’s leading LGBT weekly newspaper, Windy City Times, announced this summer that its newsroom staff was going to be in the community more and going toward mojo reporting, following its ad sales team going mobile two years ago.
“We have always prided ourselves on being out in the community,” said Publisher Tracy Baim in a news release from WCT parent Windy City Media Group. “This change will give our writers and photographers much more freedom and flexibility… Why waste energy going to a physical, static office, when they can work out in the community where they live?”
Aside from the sales team, mobility is nothing new to Baim and her team who spent the past two years developing their Queercast, an in-the-field roving LGBT bi-weekly podcast following a successful run of Windy City Radio, a in-studio weekly one-hour LGBT news and interview radio show also archived online.
Other LGBT media properties could be following mainstream outlets and Windy City Times in finding their own mojo, as the August issue of presspassQ notes.
Call it a result of the the soft economy or building momentum of the green movement. However you classify the mojo movement, it’s a sign of the times – and likely a smart business move in today’s competitive market.
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