The answer is ridiculously simple. You know who’s training tomorrow’s reporters? Steve Garfield is on his Off on a Tangent blog. Look how Steve reports things. It’s simple, brief, to the point, and loaded with appropriate links. If you ever wanted to learn good link journalism, learn from Steve. (He’s also teaching journalism now at Boston University, because they know he’s brilliant.)

But YOU, without much training, can report small news. Maybe it’s not meant for your very specific blog, but a side blog, a side project, with a few other reporters. I think realtors are actually figuring this out from a slightly different perspective.

It’s not too tricky. We have the cameraphones. We have the Flips. We have the distribution. This is as simple as putting up a blog, adding media to it, and reporting on small news that matters to you. And you, in this case, is whatever vertical matters to you: .NET reporters in Glasgow, people who live in Park Slope, the folks of OMG Pittsburgh.

This is as important as Brian’s Alive in Baghdad, only different. It’s a way to bring small to the people in a meaningful way.

If I had time, I would do this in 2009, but I don’t. But YOU might. You might be exactly the person to set up a site to show people how to report small news. You might show them how to embed videos, how to ask enough questions to make a story at least a little more balanced than a typical blog post. You might invite professional journalists in to share their experiences, and to weigh in on how to make small news reporting better. You might link to the sites who are doing small news out there, so that we build a small news network.

This is a pirate ship waiting for a captain. Are you the leader of the small news movement? Report back to us, would you?

Photo credit, Ninjapoodles

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We used to worry about larger computers. We no longer do. We used to worry about sharing information. We no longer do. We used to worry about small voices being lost in the shuffle. We used to worry about a lot of things.

Tomorrow (and I mean the day after you read this), we already are equipped with the most robust and least expensive toolset for communications that the world has ever seen. We possess massive distribution networks for free. We are all Gutenberg. We are all Murdock. We are all available and ready.

Why do we seem scared? Because the money didn’t follow the distribution lines the same way as it did with the other media (news, radio, TV, movies). But maybe that’s not where we need to get our money from this next time.

Tomorrow (and I mean the day after you read this), we are modular. We are fighting smaller wars. We are reporting smaller news. We are having simpler conversations. We are the dial tone. We are the movie theater.

Yes, bigger things will still loom. Yes, there will be those stories and issues that need the largest stage possible. This cannot and should not change.

But as for you and me, it becomes our job to atomize everything. Make components. Break it all down. From your text to your video, share and make share-able. Point out the good things. Give every piece a network. Deliver every piece to the outposts. Forget the home base. Forget the fleet. Make and launch pirate ships in all directions and seek out the gold (=goal, =whatever you think is worth sailing for).

Stay with the old at your own risk. All tomorrow’s armies are equipped and ready to embed. We don’t need to gather. We have our own dial tone. We connect and disband the way waves shape the beach.

Or not.

Photo credit, Dade