Jane Stevens gives me a clear idea about what is backpack journalism, the difference between traditional media and multimedia and how to integrate texts, videos, audios and graphics to tell stories, while Martha Stone points out the potential problems backpack journalists would have-Being Jacks of all trades, master of none, backpack journalists can just produce mediocre shortcuts but not top-quality products.
I don’t know if it is true that over the next 20 years, the content of the newspaper and the television news shows are likely to be delivered principally over the internet, as Stevens predicts optimistically in 2002, it seems too fast to realize, but I agree that convergent journalism is real and growing apace, not only in America but also in many developing countries. Backpack journalism is a necessary and effective option when it is impossible to send a group of people with respective expertise to cover one story. Preston Mendenhall’s work was a good example.
A backpack journalist can specialize in one medium and slide across media. Finding the most effective way to tell a story should be the criteria to judge a backpack journalist’s work. It is unfair to require one person to be specialist in every aspect.
No comments:
Post a Comment