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The Rebirth Of 'Backpack Journalism'

A weekend journalism discussion at the Phillips Foundation has sparked a mini-debate about whether "backpack journalism," where reporters carry more than pen and pad, is a good development.

Rob Bluey, head of the Center for Media and Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation, spoke approvingly of the idea after noting that his alma mater, Ithaca College in New York, even teaches a class called "Backpack Journalism" that requires students to carry Macbooks, videocameras, digital cameras and other equipment to do their jobs. "Personally, I think it’s the right approach — preparing the next generation of journalists with the tools they’ll need to tell stories," Bluey said.

Not everyone in the audience agreed, and Bill Beutler of Blog P.I. noted that Michael Scully, a journalism professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, also is not a fan of backpack journalism.

"It's an accountant's dream but an editor's nightmare," Scully said. "Accountants love it because you're sending one person out into the field to produce the work of three people; it's an editor's nightmare because the quality of the work is diminished." He recounted his own bad experience as a multitasking reporter in the pre-digital age to bolster his argument.

I'm with Bluey on this one. As Scully's own experience testifies, backpack journalism is really just a new phrase, not a new concept. Journalists have been doing it for decades. I've done it often myself -- and loved every minute of it. And I've hated the stories I missed when caught without my "backpack."

I remember covering a house fire in Morgantown, W.Va., once when family and friends formed a prayer circle with a distraught mother and her children right on the street, as their home smoldered in the background. I was in a perfect elevated position above the street to snap a moving photo but didn't have a camera.

Moments later, when I told our news photographer on site about that scene, he said he had witnessed it but couldn't get a photo because too many onlookers blocked the way. We were both kicking ourselves the rest of the evening for having missed one of those pictures that would have been worth a thousand of my inadequate words.

I worked at a small newspaper at the time, and most journalists who do are used to serving multiple roles. But I've also been a backpack journalist in Washington.

A few years ago, while reporting a story on prison labor for National Journal magazine, I was "on the inside" of minimum-, medium- and maximum security federal jails in Pennsylvania, where I both interviewed and photographed wardens, labor supervisors and inmates. My photos illustrated the text better than another photographer's might have because I was envisioning the story from start to finish as I snapped them -- and that assignment is to this day one of the favorites of my career.

The digital future offers even more promise of doing such stories for tomorrow's journalists. They needn't worry about carrying unwieldy equipment and learning how to develop film with chemicals (though I actually enjoyed the creativity of the darkroom). These days, everything really can fit into a backpack, and the tools are much easier to use on the front end and easier to edit with on the back end.

Scully may be correct in arguing that one journalist should not have three tasks while covering breaking news. Although the reporter still should have a digital camera and perhaps a videocamera just in case, it might be better to have three people with distinct duties in those situations.

But Scully's broader condemnation of backpack journalism as the "spork" of new media is wrong. It's only an editor's nightmare when he hires reporters who can't do more than one narrow aspect of journalism well -- or worse, who won't learn how to. It's an editor's dream when he finds the total package, a journalist who can report, write, record and film a story.

That's a goal every journalism student who wants to get ahead should aspire to, and shame on professor Scully for setting the bar lower.

[Full disclosure: I am an adviser to Heritage's media center.]

Posted by Danny | 09:20 AM

Comments

Great post, Danny. I'm glad to get your perspective on this.

Rob Bluey | 11.01.07 11:44 PM

I'm probably more with Scully on this, but for a different reason. Where's the in-house preparation for this new type of journalism?
Photography and videography are distinct skills that require training. From what I'm hearing, my friends in the newsroom aren't getting much more than a few hours - if that - before being dispatched with a still and digital video camera.
That's why, I believe, I'm seeing such bad content on the web: shaky video, interviews conducted outside where the wind is so bad, you can't hear the source; no understanding of composition so the pictures are bad; no understanding of narrative, so the pictures are pretty, but the script is mediocre.

Afi Scruggs | 11.02.07 11:26 AM

I've done enough dabbling in audio/visual editing to realize it'd be a nightmare on deadline to be expected to write a story and edit the sound and video.

tom | 11.02.07 12:10 PM

I'm a former IC grad who was heavy into print, then took a photo-j class last year as senior and never had more fun. Now I'm working for a paper in Stamford, Conn. on the city desk, just itching for a chance to take photos for one of my stories. Editors won't let me, but we we're just sold to MediaNews and Hearst in a joint venture, so maybe with their added emphasis on the Web, I'll doing more than writing and filing stories. Can't wait.

Jeff | 11.02.07 12:14 PM

I suspect this is the nut graf for "backpack journalism" objectors:

"Scully may be correct in arguing that one journalist should not have three tasks while covering breaking news. Although the reporter still should have a digital camera and perhaps a videocamera just in case, it might be better to have three people with distinct duties in those situations."

The assignment editors these days aren't saying, carry these things in case you need them. They're saying, carry these things and we want a story, photos, video, audio, and we want you to file updates every hour for the Web site. And you're the only person on the assignment. It gets a bit difficult.

Dexter Westbrook | 11.02.07 01:39 PM

I can't read my own handwriting... So I'm a carrier. And I have started to carry the camera. Maybe I'm just cheapening the fully trained photogs.

Kimmy | 11.02.07 02:05 PM

Just to be clear, I think it's a good thing to teach. Nothing wrong with preparing journalism students a little bit about every part of what the news team does.

My problem, like Sculley's, is summed up pretty well by Dexter Westbrook in the comment above. I suspect print journalists will be asked to produce non-print content because the editors have come to believe they *need* a video element to be competitive on the web and that the owners or publishers won't devote enough resources to the projec.

As a former journalist myself (text more than print, per se) I always bristled at the notion of "lazy journalists." No, "harried journalists" is more like it. And this sounds like a recipe for more harriedness.

WWB | 11.02.07 10:40 PM

As a career small-market journalist (by choice, thanks), I can safely say that shooting pix to go with a photo has been standard operating procedure for most of us for...well, forever.
As a photographer, I don't claim to be as good a decent full-time photog, but I'm not bad either. But it took years to get to that point. I see younger journalists struggling with it. At least now, we don't have to develop and print, too.
However, I believe adding audio-video is the step too far. You're there to point the video camera and do the myriad technical stuff, or be the one who asks questions about what's going on - and then pay attention to the answers.
We recently tried to add collecting "sound bites" of our newspaper interviews for an associated radio program.
We were assured it would not affect the quality of our interviews, and that the technical aspects would be a "quick and easy" process.
Naturally, it changed the tenor of the interviews completely, and the process turned out to be anything but "quick and easy." The sound-bite collection has been abandoned.
Journalists are multi-talented, but they can't do it all at once.

Kevin W. | 11.03.07 01:10 AM

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