Getting better all the time

Backpacker journalism is a mush of mediocrity (at least right now), and it's also here to stay.

Stevens doesn't deny that she has a lot to learn about using the various media to its full professional and creative potential. She admits that occasionally, even she, "a master of multimedia," has forgotten to wipe the smudge off her camera lens or fully take her microphone out of the camera view. I imagine that happens all the time to other backpack journalists all over the world--especially those of us who don't get aired on National Geographic on our first try. Most of the backpack journalists who first specialize in a specific medium (which these days is still most of us) will naturally miss something when reporting on something on unfamiliar technological terrian. Photographers will write crummy copy. Writers will overexpose pictures. Broadcast people will screw up everything. At the same time, more information in more media adds something interesting to the story, even if part of it isn't professionally done. Jones is exactly right when she says "whipping up a satisfying meal of professionally prepared multimedia journalism...is a feast few journalists can serve up." But she won't be right for long.