Backpack Comeback
By Neil Dodds
13 September, 2005
"Backpack journalism" is in the news again as it emerges that Yahoo.com has hired a renowned war correspondent to report solo from the world's trouble zones for a year.
The Guardian reports that the American cameraman Kevin Sites will visit every site listed by International Institute for Strategic Studies as a site of "hot" armed conflict.
Sites, who hit the headlines last year when he filmed a controversial shooting incident in a Fallujah mosque last year, will use three cameras, one of which has been modified to be attached to a headband. Sites will edit and transmit his material to Yahoo using a suite of digital tools. He will travel alone, hiring translators and guides in situ, and will be backed up with a "mission control" team in the US who will monitor his activity.
Yahoo says that Sites' output will cover text, video, audio and photography. Viewers will be able to interact with him via online chats held on the "Hot Zone" website.
Sites is among the pioneers of what is now called "Sojo" or "solo journalism." A few years ago its predecessor, "backpack journalism" created a buzz in convergent media circles, as improved technology made it possible, in theory, for journalists to contribute film or images to their reports. Many large companies, including the BBC, invested in "backpack journalist" staff training, despite resistance from some trade unions to the multitasking it proposed, and concerns that job cuts would follow among technical staff. "One man band" journalists lugging their kits to war zones have not become as commonplace as many commentators expected, but backpack journalism has made a real impact in newspaper to web productions. It is probably fair to say that its influence will grow as new media companies and broadcasters are created as a result of the digital revolution.
Yahoo describes the project as part of its plan to develop "reporting for the new millenium." The Guardian adds that the search provider is widely believed to be broadening its brief and presenting a challenge to traditional "big media" by moving into news production, rather than aggregating other producers like Google.
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