Backpack Journalism Blog

LITCHFIELD BEACH, South Carolina, 26 November 2010 — Especially because we usually work alone, backpack journalists have to pay attention to every detail. There’s nobody around to run through a checklist with us. So every time you pull the camera out of the bag, clean the lens. I know it sounds silly, but we get so wrapped up in the big stuff — tapes, time codes, composition, sound, focus, batteries, not to mention the story itself, that we forget the small stuff. We come back from a shoot with smears or particles on our images that we failed to notice on the lens out there in the field. So get a little brush to clean off the heavy debris on the lens, and some good lens tissue for the smears and tiny particles. And use them! (Photo by David Bathgate)

LITCHFIELD BEACH, South Carolina, 24 November 2010 — You see it all the time. Lovely women wearing ugly lav microphones sticking out of their neck as if it were some malignant growth. Hide the thing! Go to a pharmacy and get some Moleskin tape, which you normally would apply to your heel when wearing new shoes that otherwise would chew up the back of your foot. Use Moleskin to tape the lav – without the clip – to the inside of your subjects’ garment. The stuff is porous so you can actually hear through it. And it protects the mic from necklaces or other items that otherwise would rub against the lav and ruin your sound. Take a look at Megan Stack, a great nurse at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. I shot Megan at work for “Nurses Needed,” a piece broadcast by NOW on PBS. Find the lav! (Photo by Bill Gentile)

WASHINGTON, 18 NOVEMBER 2010 — I can’t tell you how many of my backpack journalism students lose critical visual and audio information because they are not connected to their characters with headphones. Once your character is out of sight and you are not listening to him/her over the wireless microphone, you’ve cut yourself off not only from what’s happening right now but also from what’s going to happen in the immediate future. You can’t anticipate what you’re going to shoot if you don’t know what your character is going to do. Go out and buy a $12 pair of headphones that you insert into your ears. With these, as opposed to the large ear-covering headphones, you can stay connected with what your character is doing and you can retain peripheral hearing as well. These tiny ear plugs don’t get in your way. They don’t cut you off from your immediate surroundings. You can use them underneath a helmet. And they don’t make you look like Mickey Mouse.

So stick them in your ears and keep them there during the entire shoot. (Photo by Bill Gentile)

By Kady Buchanan

WASHINGTON, DC, 28 October 2010 – Alexandra Garcia, a graduate of American University’s School of Communication, returned to a classroom she left six years ago to discuss her efforts to “show the people” through her work at the Washington Post.

Garcia is the latest in Professor Bill Gentile’s Backpack Journalism Speaker Series hosted by his “Photojournalism and Social Documentary” class of undergraduate and graduate students. One of Gentile’s former students, Garcia shared her journey from the classroom, to video journalism for The Washington Post’s new department of video news.

“This is not that far back…and not that far away,” Professor Gentile said as he introduced Garcia to the class. It was a reference to the fact that Garcia had been an undergraduate student sitting in the same classroom only six years prior to her visit.

Although Garcia’s visit was not the first real-world professional that Gentile has hosted, her youth and recent graduation from the same photojournalism course provided a more realistic and obtainable view of success in the craft.

Underlying the importance of networking sooner than later, Garcia said she started off as an intern at The Washington Post as a Web photo editor, and quickly earned a job, partly by being in the right place at the right time.

On her path to the Post’s multimedia section, she not only devoted long hours to the job but also came in on her off days to show her commitment, while still making a concerted effort to never slack in her position as Web Photo Editor.

Garcia described her first years at the Post as very formative for her work today as a photojournalist. One of her first assignments consisted of recording and editing audio for photo slide shows. Having the opportunity to focus solely on audio, she said, helped her truly understand the basics of constructing a story.

Garcia went on to show the class a few highlights from her body of work at the Video Journalism department of The Post. These included work on health care, fashion and a snowball fight in DuPont Circle during “Snow-maggedon.” Garcia said the pieces reflect not only her own style but also a new direction at The Post, in that they address issues in a short, documentary film format. They address issues quickly, as they are broadcasting online, but with each journalist’s style embedded in the piece, as opposed to television news, which still follows a much stricter format.

“We’re not on television, so why should our pieces look like they are?” she said. “We’re on the Web.”

When asked what skills and educational tools helped her on the road to success, Garcia singled out interactive media skills, writing, and photojournalism. Students were taken with Garcia and her work. Her visit gave them yet another perspective on how to use the classroom skills in an industry that is constantly changing.

“My goal in this type of work is to do what video does best, and show the people,” Garcia said. And she has achieved that.

Photos by Areeb Zuaiter

WASHINGTON, DC, 5 November 2010 — I’ve recently come across two documents that, particularly after the recent election, are as profoundly relevant as they are disconcerting. The first is a 1958 interview by Mike Wallace of social critic and author of “Brave New World,” Aldous Huxley. The other is a recent speech by Bill Moyers.

Both underline the importance of journalism in today’s brave new world.

Moyers speech

Moyers-speech

WASHINGTON, DC, 5 November 2010 — Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino (right) spent much of last night’s discussion criticizing U.S. media for alleged misbehavior.

I found this absolutely extraordinary, coming from a person who worked for George W. Bush, the president who misled the country into what many consider the greatest single catastrophe in the history of U.S. foreign policy — the invasion and occupation of Iraq. At a discussion designed to help young Americans discern between truth and falsehood in the age of information overload, Perino failed to mention that her employer prohibited the publication of photographs showing coffins containing the nearly 5,000 American servicemen and women killed in Iraq.

During the discussion, Perino did point out that Iraq now boasts numerous daily newspapers, in contrast to pre-invasion days when the country had only one. I wonder if the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed and wounded in violence unleashed by the invasion find much comfort in that statistic.

Participating in last night’s discussion was Michael McCurry (left), White House Press Secretary under President Bill Clinton. The event, “Briefing the Press: Former White House Press Secretaries Compare Notes,” was moderated by Candy Crowley of CNN. It was hosted by The News Literacy Project at Walt Whitman High School. (Photo by Bill Gentile)