(Caption: Rajneesh Bhandari taking picture of India Gate, New Delhi. Photo by Ravi Bajpai.)
Kathmandu: A senior camera man called me “Nepali Kuire”, meaning Nepali foreigner. I was carrying a Canon 550 D camera while i was covering a special meeting of Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai with deputy Prime Minister and home minister Bijay Kumar Gachhadar recently. For him i looked like a foreigner, with a camera hanging on my neck and holding a notebook and pen.

Very much inspired by the multimedia storytelling I always carry a camera, a recorder, a notebook and a smart-phone. I tweet, facebook and post pictures on social media as i report for Kantipur Television where i work full-time. But i enjoy the work flow . Doing multiple stuffs at the same time interesting and a challenge as well.

It’s amazing, people i don’t know personally re-tweet my tweets, follow me and share my stories, pictures and blogs. Some even pick the photos and write blogs based on them. A recent is when Nepal Photos featured one of my pictures and Right Now featured two of my mobile pictures.

Social Media not only helps me to connect with the audience but also helps to archive my reporting events.

Multimedia Journalism is still in infancy in Nepal. There are many things to do and much more to explore on this field. I am sure that the future is very bright, bright for a young journalist like me.

After listening to ‘Journalism Blues’, i don’t agree that new media and new tools are making reporting troublesome. (But this one of the best journalism songs i have ever heard! )

If i were to remake journalism blues to multimedia blues, it would be something like this:

I am a multimedia journalist, I use a smart phone and a dslr
I find out who, what, where, when, how and why
I report, tweet, facebook, make a podcast, photo essay and video,
I also write a blog and post on Facebook; and never felt so close with my audience.