Technology creates 'backpack journalist'

Armed with $15,000 in satellite phones and computers, Preston Mendenhall is a journalistic one-man band, writing stories, taking photographs and shooting video in combat zones.

The international editor for MSNBC.com has joined other reporters in Iraq, where he is recording the reaction of the Kurds in the northern part of the country to the American-led bombing.

He represents a new breed of reporter: the "backpack journalist."

These journalists rely on lightweight laptops, satellite phones, inexpensive editing software and digital cameras -- equipment that is a fraction of the cost and size of conventional, shoulder-mounted gear. They file video from some of the most remote spots on Earth, supplying material primarily to the Web, but occasionally to television.

"You get a connection, set up the camera, point it at yourself and just do it -- you're live," Mendenhall said via satellite phone. "But if there's any weapons of mass destruction, I'm outta here."

The technology often gives them greater mobility than camera crews.

"The people who can shoot video, write stories, do radio on the side, basically do it all -- these are the journalists of the future," said John Schidlovsky, director of the Washington-based Pew Fellowship in International Journalism. "The technology has made journalism much more immediate and instantaneous."

Backpackers -- also called solo journalists, or "sojos" -- are a tiny minority of the hundreds of foreign journalists in and around Iraq, and they will not eclipse mainstream media any time soon.

Because they often work alone, and do everything themselves, they can fall prey to fatigue, fear and confusion.

Some experts also worry that less-seasoned backpackers, particularly those who post directly to Web sites and do not file through editors back home, will produce reports that lack context or analysis.

"Backpack journalists have to know the difference between when you're a lone wolf and when you're part of a greater whole -- and they have to file with that in mind," said Jane Ellen Stevens, a pioneer backpack journalist who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley. Stevens specializes in science and technology and has been reporting backpack-style since 1997 from such locales as a research icebreaker in Antarctica and a space camp in Russia.

Travis Fox, a video journalist for WashingtonPost.com, filed footage on Saturday of coalition troops in Umm Qasr, Iraq, building a prisoner of war camp.

For most of his stories, Fox uses a Sony PD150, a roughly $7,000, 12-pound digital video camera with a five-hour battery. The gear is less than half the weight and one-tenth the cost of equipment used by crews for large networks.

But Fox, one of hundreds of U.S. journalists "embedded" with U.S. troops, knows that no medium can mask the limits of human endurance.

"We're going to make a run for the border tomorrow, early," Fox said wearily from a Kuwaiti hotel before the war started. "There are roadblocks. It's a long shot. I'm not so much nervous or excited as I'm tired."

Many backpackers worry about battery life and technical hiccups, and having no backup from co-workers.

CNN correspondent Kevin Sites is a pioneer backpack war correspondent who mixes solo with team coverage and has been frustrated at times by the technical hurdles. In one recent enty on his personal Web journal, he complained, "Iraq tech hell."

Other media organizations have shied away from backpacker technology because the images are too grainy.

London-based Associated Press Television News relies primarily on Sony's broadcast-quality electronic news gathering equipment -- a $70,000 package that includes a shoulder-mounted camera, tripod, lens, batteries, lights and microphones. APTN usually dispatches a camera person, who hauls the 30-pound camera, as well as an on-camera journalist, who totes gear as well.

APTN has purchased smaller cameras, but editorial manager David Modrowski said the company has no plans to switch over entirely to backpack-style equipment.

"In proper, full sunlight, it's pretty tough for the untrained eye to tell the difference," Modrowski said of the lighter equipment. "But when you notice it is when you get to low-light conditions, and certainly now we're seeing a lot of nighttime activity in Iraq."