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San Francisco TV Station KPIX Channel 5's Mike Sugarman discovers the Sony camera at BART.

On Friday of last week, on the way to Cafe Americano to meet a friend, Mike Sugarman - the long-time San Francisco KPIX Channel 5 (CBS) News Man, who interviewed this blogger when the focus was bringing the Super Bowl to Oakland in 1999 - was struggling with a new Sony Betacam camera that he was given to use for a story about the planned BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) 15 cent fare decrease (which he and I disagree about.)

I stopped to help Mike and suggested he restart the Sony camera; he did and it worked. So, in turn he interviewed me as part of his segment.

That was Mike's first time with the camera on his own.

For 31 years Mike Sugarman worked a story assignment with a camera person. But in the age of smaller media budgets, reporters like Mike Sugarman are learning to be, well, something like video bloggers, using the camera to make the news themselves without a camera person. That saves as much as $500 to $1,000 for a segment.

This is an example of what I was blogging about regarding Social Networking being Social Broadcasting. Now, you have the power to make media just like Channel Five's Mike Sugarman. The only difference is in your ability to use the equipment.

Mike Sugarman says it's something more he's got to do that's part of the job, but to me it's a lot of fun. He's more flexible and can react faster to stories that develop. In fact, he really could have done the same job with just a Flip Video Camera. One day a Non AT&T iPhone will allow one to make studio quality videos.

Wait. We've got that already, just with AT&T.

Rats.

Catch Mike Sugarman on SF Channel Five, KPIX.