I have to admit, I’ve been contributing to the hype. This past weekend, Shea and I spent two hours camped out in front of the Apple store at Lenox Mall. Shea purchased a shiny new iPhone 3G S.  I’m still under contract with the evil cell phone company, so I’ll have to wait for mine.

In local TV news land, the addition of video capabilities to the iPhone 3G S has staffers chomping at the bit.

In Miami, a local TV producer was assigned to cover the hype surrounding the release of the new Apple phone.  He shot the entire story using his own newly obtained iPhone 3G S. A black hole opened in the universe.

Meanwhile, a professional photographer has totally geeked-out and photog’ed up the iPhone 3G S by creating a shoulder mount.  The apparatus is apparently designed to mimic the features of those big ‘ol fancy cams you see TV news photographers carry around.

You can read about how he made the rig, here.  Then, read the hilarious commentary, here.

There’s no doubt the video capabilities of the iPhone 3G S will help bring about major changes to the ways professional journalists obtain and distribute media to viewers/readers/users.

But, as journalists, we should remember that the iPhone and other similar devices are just tools in our arsenal.  We should not shoot packages on the iPhone, just to say we did.  We should learn the capabilities of the tool and use it when appropriate.  Afterall, you would use your best new power drill to hammer nails, would you?

The rapid pace of technological development has brought us a lot of new gizmos to play with.  Many of them are REALLY cool.  It is up to us to learn about these gadgets,  master their capabilities, and add the tool to our belt. Then, when the time is appropriate, pull out the right tool for the job.

A lot has been written about the topic of the changing landscape in local TV news, and I doubt I can more eloquently explain what needs to be than the authors of these two columns.

The first column appears in TV NewsDay. “The last thing local TV news needs is another critic. Too bad. Here I go,” author Harry A. Jessell says in his opening line.

There are a lot of interesting quotes from Jessell’s column. Here are my favorites:

“Local TV news has got to change if it intends to serve the next generation. Instead of top down, think peer to peer. The newscast should feel like an exchange of information.

“This is not easy to do in broadcasting, which is, after all, a one-way medium. But stations can invite viewers to participate by phone, by e-mail, by texting, whatever. Some stations have already begun to do a little of this. All should do it more.”

“Do newsrooms have to look like the bridge of a spaceship in a summer sci-fi movie? Do anchors really still have to wear suits?”

The other column of note comes from Vadim Lavrusik at Mashable:

10 Ways Journalism Schools are Teaching Social Media
With news organizations beginning to create special positions to manage the use of social media tools, such as the recently appointed social editor at The New York Times, journalism schools are starting to recognize the need to integrate social media into their curricula. That doesn’t mean having a class on Facebook or Twitter, which many college students already know inside and out, but instead means that professors are delving into how these tools can be applied to enrich the craft of reporting and producing the news and ultimately telling the story in the best possible way.

Lavrusik writes about promoting content, conducting interviews, newsgathering and building a community, among other things, using social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook. The are some great lessons here for the “old dogs” of local TV news.

As I read through these articles I began to think about what a local newscast should look like.

What if news anchors and reporters talked and dressed like normal people? To borrow a thought from Jessell, “let them wear what they wear and maybe they will be able to relate better to an audience.” Maybe that will help the on air folks be more conversational.

Newscasts should become more dynamic, and involve a conversation with the audience, not cross-talk between anchors.

Newscasts should consider displaying user’s comments in real time, as stories and issues are being presented. There could be a “third anchor” focused only on moderating and presenting conversations. That anchor would never be scripted, and appear throughout the newscast.

These are only a few ideas that may help local news tackle a much larger dilemma: turning what was once a one-way presentation (TV news) into a two-way conversation.