Brussels media tech addiction

Imagine this: an application on your mobile phone which allows you to type in a topic and a location, then lines up all of the articles you require in an easy-to-read format.

No need to click your way on and off online platforms. No need to endlessly refine the wording on your word search-engine. Nothing getting between you and the information you need.

If this kind of an app sounds like a journalist's dream, it's because it is: the technology was tailor-made for the International Press Association of Brussels, which represents the largest media contingent in the world.

The software was developed by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Union's in-house scientific research unit, based in Italy.

Erik van der Goot is the JRC researcher who led the technological charge on behalf of the EU's reporters, although he will not be drawn into whether journalists actually need it.

"It is a quite powerful news aggregator, which can categorise the news into many, many different categories," van der Goot says. "So you don't have to go to 20 different websites to find material on a particular subject. You go to the subject and you find the news from 20 different websites."

The EU's outgoing commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, was in no doubt journalists would get value out of the app, which she launched in Brussels recently.

"I think you can never have enough technology, Geoghegan-Quinn told DW. "It doesn't just apply to journalists - I think it applies to commissioners as well. I think what we need to do is learn how to use it and implement the use of it in our work."

The commissioner laughed off suggestions that the technology would prompt journalists to spend even more of their time surfing the web for news.

"I think journalists are curious by nature," she says. "They'll always want to have one-to-one interviews with people, rather than be staring at a screen."

Mixed feelings

When quizzed about their tech habits, EU journalists admitted to a close - if not a downright obsessive - relationship with their devices.

Ann Cahill, EU correspondent for the Irish Examiner and the president of the International Press Association, says she walks around with her "whole office" in her bag.

"Personally I love the new technology," Cahill says. "I am old enough to remember how we used to do it and I can tell you this is a hell of a lot better."

"I have all the gadgets, all the devices and all the apps," she says. "But I have to remind myself not to spend too much time on them. I did download a very interesting app that recorded how long I spent on all of these things. That was very enlightening!"

Valentina Pop, a journalist with the investigative news site EU Observer, describes herself as a "smartphone fan" and argues that following online social networking site Twitter has become a must for journalists.

"Nowadays, a lot of news is broken on Twitter," Pop says. "So if you're not on Twitter, you tend to miss out."

Beda Romano, a journalist with Italian financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore, says he owns a tablet, a smartphone and a laptop equipped with all the technology he needs. Yet he says his relationship with Twitter is not a good one.

"I work for a newspaper and I do think that a newspaper journalist should write stories that survive more than one day," Romano says. "If I start tweeting, I am afraid that my stories would be a summary of tweets, and that's not my aim."

Technologically enhanced

For Brussels-based freelance journalist Maurizio Molinari, technology is more than a gimmick. As a blind journalist his devices provide him with the support he needs to get the job done.

Molinari runs a software called VoiceOver on his Apple devices, which read out whatever appears on the screen. Because Molinari speaks a number of European languages, he has software that manages content in Italian, Spanish, German, French, Russian and Italian.

"Technology helps a great deal. It makes things easier," Molinari says. "It enables me to read newspapers, to check RSS feeds - so all major news sources online."

Molinari has worked in Brussels for over six years and files regularly for a range of print outlets in Europe, as well as the BBC's World Service and Radio 4. He uses his smartphone to get around town, with map applications providing him with guidance.

"Sometimes I think it's quite funny that people would see a blind guy around Brussels, with his white cane, checking his emails on the phone," he says.

As for whether he would be able to do his job without the technology, Molinari says it would be possible. "I think it would be - just a lot more difficult," he says.