I'm curious about the extent to which digital consumer products can be
used to create serious multimedia journalism, and how much of such
stuff is in the possession of young journalists on this list.

Here's what I'm talking about, though I'm certainly no expert.

Web cams
cell phones cameras
cell phones that shoot video (in however limited a fashion)
MP3 players with a digital audio recording, which could be used for interviews

then, a higher level of this stuff that is still consumer gear --
digital video recorders, higher resolution digital cameras, full-on
digital audio recorders, what else?

If you own none of this stuff, that's interesting too, along with the
reasons why (I realize they don't give this stuff away free; yet it's
fairly cheap).

While it's true that in many cases, a professional or mainstream
publication won't require journalists to handle full multimedia
production themselves, knowing multimedia and owning the equipment to
do it could be helpful for people starting their own publications or
using indy journalism as a way toward the mainstream.

A sterling example is Hunter graduate Sara Stuteville's "Common
Language Project: Positive Reporting across Borders"
<http://www.commonlanguageproject.net/?page_id=7>

Anyway, it would be interesting to know -- what do you have in your
toolkit? Are you using it for journalism? Do you create any sort of
multimedia work isfor fun, e.g., for YouTube?

Peter

-- 
Peter Parisi, Ph.D.
Dept. of Film & Media Studies
Hunter College
695 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10021
212-772-4949
"People don't change. They just find out who they are." -- Ray Skean