By CARL BIALIK
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE

NEW YORK -- Will tomorrow's reporters need a pen, notebook -- and Wi-Fi?

ABC News's radio operation is looking to find out, through a current trial
here and in Washington, D.C., using the wireless Internet technology. A day
with one of its reporters shows the flexibility of Wi-Fi, but also its
technological glitches.

Bob Schmidt, a veteran correspondent, was assigned on a recent morning to
gather man-on-the-street reactions to news that some movie theaters here
would soon sell $15 reserved seats. In the past, he would have left ABC News
headquarters in midtown Manhattan for a popular public gathering spot,
interviewed people using a digital audio recorder with minidiscs, and then
hopped back on the subway to edit and file the piece from the studio. The
piece would then get beamed out as part of the ABC News broadcast to more
than 2,000 affiliate stations nationwide. (ABC News is a unit of Walt Disney
Co.)

But since last month, ABC News Radio correspondents have been experimenting
with filing stories via Wi-Fi Internet connections, in a possible prelude to
expanded use of the technology. Instead of going back to the office,
reporters are looking to beam live broadcasts and interview clips via public
Wi-Fi connections, which are increasingly available in bookstores,
restaurants and public parks. Stories get filed faster and the station gets
live reports complete with ambient street sounds. Wi-Fi also is becoming a
popular tool with reporters in other media, like newspapers and Web sites,
enabling them to file stories by e-mail, without having to find a telephone
jack or return to the office.

But in practice, Wi-Fi isn't always easy. "It's really the wild, wild west,"
Mr. Schmidt says.

Mr. Schmidt's Wi-Fi odyssey starts out well. He begins at Rockefeller Center
at 10:30 a.m., chatting up some sightseers about the $15 tickets and
recording their responses on minidisc. One man, from Memphis, Tenn.,
deadpans that scalpers could get $30 or $40 for some movie tickets, but then
notes that he can buy two pirated movies for $15 in Manhattan. One couple,
Edith and Alex Hamilton from Long Island, N.Y., disagree: She'd pay the
premium, but he thinks it's "ridiculous."

After a few minutes of quick interviews, it's almost time for the 11 a.m.
newscast, in which he'll have 20 to 25 seconds to give a brief introduction
and then describe people's responses. He could also weave in sound clips
from the interviews using software on his laptop, but that's trickier.

Before doing the interviews, Mr. Schmidt scoped out a nearby hot spot. As
with many such access points, its origin is unclear; some individuals and
businesses leave their connections open to the public, sometimes
unwittingly. (The signals usually provide access for several hundred feet
from the hot-spot source.) But this connection proves too faint for radio
quality, at least from a bench near 5th Ave., and Mr. Schmidt misses the 11
a.m. newscast.

Using a cellphone to call in the story isn't an option. Mr. Schmidt, whose
duties range from man-on-the-street assignments to war coverage to
anchoring, has had a cellphone for nearly two decades, and it can work for
live broadcasts in a breaking story -- like the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks -- but the quality generally isn't high enough for prime time, he
says. Radio broadcasts have to pass what he calls the Volkswagen test,
meaning they have to be understood by someone driving on the highway with
the windows rolled all the way down.

So it's off to Bryant Park, a tested spot for ABC News reporters. But there
are more problems. With the battery at 56% power with 30 minutes to go
before the noon newscast, Mr. Schmidt decides to shut down the laptop. But
when he reboots and tries to connect, he keeps getting a screen exhorting
him to log in to Verizon Communications Inc.'s paid service beamed from a
nearby hotspot. Another restart doesn't solve the problem, and he misses the
broadcast; the studio is too far to reach in time.

Claude Rubinowicz, a 56-year-old freelance consultant who has toted his
laptop to Bryant Park to take advantage of the day's good weather, says he's
also encountered the Verizon problem, and solved it by "error and trial."
Verizon directs a hot spot at Bryant Park from its headquarters across the
street, says a Verizon spokeswoman, but the company doesn't aim to override
any other Wi-Fi providers. She adds that Wi-Fi users who encounter the
problem can resolve it by reconfiguring their cards or downloading free
software.

Mr. Schmidt takes his laptop to another spot in the park, this one near some
public art freighted with symbolism. The exhibit of more than 600 old
typewriters caged in steel boxes is intended by the artist to evoke
censorship, but surrounded as it is by dozens of laptop users, it seems to
herald the arrival of new machines. Mr. Schmidt sits among other users,
fires up his machine and connects to the free Wi-Fi hot spot. Minutes
later -- and almost 90 minutes after first trying to broadcast from
Rockefeller Center -- he's on the air live with Daria Albinger, an anchor
for an ABC News channel heard on satellite radio stations. He reads from his
notepad, the lowest-tech tool in his arsenal, and also responds to her
questions about the $15 tickets. (Will free soda and popcorn be included?
No.)

"You want to spend more time going out and reporting the story, but
sometimes there are technical headaches," Mr. Schmidt says afterwards. He's
not just talking about Wi-Fi. Now 57 years old, he recalls covering antiwar
marches on the Pentagon in October 1967, for which he had to lug a 25-pound
two-way portable radio four times around the huge Defense Department complex
to get a new battery. Three decades later, while covering Hurricane Bertha,
he had to hoist a power cable out his window to plug into a truck. The gusts
nearly blew his satellite phone out the window. Earlier this year, in Iraq
covering the second Gulf War (He also covered the first), he found the
blowing sand interfered with his digital recorder and so he switched to an
old-fashioned analog one.

But overall, he's bullish about technology, and about the prospects for
Wi-Fi. He says he'd love to have one hand-held device with a Wi-Fi card and
a recorder built in: "If they can make this lighter, more mobile and with
everything you need, it's the Holy Grail."

Early kinks are to be expected, says Steve Jones, vice president of ABC News
Radio. He adds that Wi-Fi isn't meant to replace other means of connecting.
"This is not about guaranteed connectivity from the field -- we can already
do that," Mr. Jones says, citing cellphones, satellite phones and landlines.
"This is about trying something that is new. It presents some opportunities,
and with it there are some challenges."

Mr. Jones says the technology should eventually save the station money, by
cutting out the need for installing landlines at events it covers, and
should increase reporters' mobility, springing them to do more and better
stories. The cost of outfitting another dozen or so reporters is
"negligible," Mr. Jones says: Wi-Fi cards sell for under $100, and a U.K.
company called MDOUK is making its live-audio software Audio TX
(www.audiotx.com) available for free, since ABC News is helping to test it.
By the end of the year, all ABC News reporters are expected to be equipped
for Wi-Fi when on assignment, and Mr. Jones expects the technology to be
especially helpful with campaign coverage, centered as it is around
hotspot-heavy hotels and convention centers.