I completely disagree with the slippery slope that Martha Stone paints in her article on backpacking journalists. She makes the assumption that individual journalists will be assigned to breaking news stories, and in the rush and madness of the moment do a poor job in comparison to a collaborative effort from a team of journalists. However, the primary function of a do-it-all journalist is not to cover hard, time-sensitive news. Even with the top-down reforms that Stone cites, the vast majority of news organizations will send a team to cover the type of stories she uses to critique backpack journalists. Later in her article, she presents examples (as exceptions) of passable backpack journalists, and guess what? None of them covered hard news. They were sent on assignments where features/impressions were the focus of the stories, and it is in this area that a backpack journalist can excel. Whenever there is a tight deadline, a team is required, for many hands make the work light. But when the deadline is not as tight, well, two hands can be sufficient.
The other article does a good job of describing different situations that call for different approaches: producer vs. reporter driven stories. The latter is the area where backpack journalism will be most useful, for again, these stories usually involve more flexibility with regards to specific deadlines. It also talks about how multi-media journalists will eventually become standard as more and more news shifts to the Internet. One benefit of multi-media stories is the ability to convey context, which I had not considered before. There is also more media available at a pace defined by the viewer/reader/listener.
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