HEY! What's in your backpack?

From what I've read so far, Backpack Journalists are a growing group of solo journalists relying on using multiple items such as laptops, digital cameras and editing softwear and doing the job that usually would take four people to do. To me it seems you can be more flexible and get the story or whatever you are working on done quicker than a traditional camera crew would. On his website, Jared Silfies showed what he himself carries around in his backpack to be a successful backpack journalist. Items like his Smartphone, Coolpix Camera, Audio Voice recorder and Digital videocamera and of course, his own copy of The Elements of Style. Jared gives a rundown on how and why he wants to upgrade his equipment, which to me means he's looking to get better technology to get stories out quicker and do a more efficient job so it shows he serious about being a journalist.

I haven't read the Elements book yet, but I think it will be very helpful now and in the future for me to have because you can always get better in writing for your career and not have to worry about bad grammar and other errors. Misspelled words and general rules of composition are all in this book. So, again, I think Jared having this book shows he's serious about his profession and not wanting to put out stories that don't flow well or have a bunch of grammatical errors.

As for the portfolios, the one I looked at was JD Sutter's It's pretty plain and simple as a website, but he's done a wide variety of stories as Staff Writer for The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City, OK. He's won numerous awards including the First Amendment Award for an online project (Ft. Worth Socity of Professional Journalists). He also wrote The Oklahoman's first story with featured video content. So I'm certain he has some sort of a digital videocamera and audio capabilities since he was the first to have feature video content. He probably has a really nice digital camera because he has great pictures on his site from the story he wrote in Cape Town, South Africa for The Citizen, which is Cape Town's largest daily paper. Being he's the lead staff writer, or one of them, he has to be equipped and be ready to go if he needs to go out and complete a story of interest for the paper.