Backpack Journalism

.
Golden Age

Terry Gross: “Do you feel like, as a reporter who covers the business of media, that you are reporting on the dismemberment of your own profession?”

David Carr: “No, I think we are entering a golden age of journalism. I do think there has been horrible frictional costs, but I think when we look back at what has happened, I look at my backpack that is sitting here, and it contains more journalistic firepower than the entire newsroom that I walked into 30 to 40 years ago. It’s connected to the cloud, I can make digital recordings of everything that I do, I can check in real time if someone is telling me the truth, I have a still camera that takes video that I can upload quickly and seamlessly.

“I think that the ability to sit at your desk and check everything against history and narrative, it’s part of how newspapers ended up becoming . . . daily magazines. All the analytics are baked in because the reporters are able to check stuff as they go.”

—David Carr, New York Times media writer,
with “Fresh Air” host Terry Gross, National Public Radio,
October 27, 2011 URL
(Thanks to alert WORDster Jim Foust)
Image: Idaho’s first newspaper, The Golden Age, Lewiston, Idaho, 1862-1865

• Editorial Comment: If a backpack falls in the newsroom, does anyone pay attention?

MORE INTERESTING STUFF . . . .

Visit our award-winning student news site, The Hard News Café
• Bell choir startles stressed students with ringing flash-mob concert, by Heidi Hansen
• Drug Court helps addicts help themselves, one step at a time, by Rachel Kenley
• Customers queue up in the cold, wait for hours for free food at Cafe Rio, by April Ashland


PeezPIX by Ted Pease

• PeezPix cards & prints
. . . Catalog here.





.