Backpack Journalism: a Distant Future

"There's a middle road (about backpack journalism). The specialist journalist isn't going away when the cameras have more knobs than on the dashboard of my car,"
Kerry Northrup’s above quote I feel best describes the near future of backpack journalists. Northrup’s point is that reporting is too complicated. Also most true journalists will be unable to possess all the skills required to be a backpack journalist. To be able to film, video and print edit, upload graphics, create a web page, and write an acceptable print story would take years of training.
Now as the University of Missouri continues to expand its convergence journalism program, we will see the number of backpack journalists grow rapidly. However, I do not believe that in our lifetime we will see news reporting dominated by backpack journalists. It is just far too difficult for a journalist to adapt and become excellent at one type of reporting after years of practicing another and I therefore, agree with Martha Stone’s argument that backpack journalists will only produce mediocrity.