Digital journalist: Having fun again

It's been a busy week, much of it spent scurrying about, meeting municipal officials, attending a city press briefing and then live-blogging during a forum on Elgin's form of government. In between times, I ran about looking for -- and after the third stop, finding -- a digital voice recorder with a USB port, a couple of notebooks and a satchel to carry around a Netbook.

The digital recorder was it's own little adventure. Back in the day, reporters either relied solely on notes or used a clunky tape recorder that you were lucky if you could get it into a coat pocket. Later there were microcassette recorders, a smaller, slimmed-down version of the standard cassette recorder that still was large-ish but easier to carry around.

But the digital recorders today are far smaller and far more advanced -- the USB port gives me the option of downloading an interview into my computer, where I can edit it into sound bites to accompany stories online.