Backpacking Across The Mountain of Journalism And Staying in J-Hostels

Tracy Pfeiffer

The concept of "backpack journalism" has its obvious appeals -- it's a timesaver, a moneysaver, and it frees up desk space in the bull pen. However, I believe that the essential problem with backpack journalism is summed up in a single sentence from the second article: Inevitably, most backpack journalists are a "Jack of all trades, and master of none." I think that it is important to have people who specialize in certain mediums not just so that they can produce high quality work in that field but also because they will be able to provide advice and suggestions to the "backpack journalists" who may have a question about their camera or webpage-building program. Those who specialize in a trade are more likely to keep up-to-date on technological advances; those who try to operate everything will have to work much harder and waste much more time looking up updates on every piece of equipment they have. So while I think that backpack journalism is here to stay, I think that the regular ol' boring specialized journalist has pretty good job security as well.