Neil Davis: Great-granddaddy of backpack journalism?

The backpack journalist, a.k.a. APJ or all-platform journalist, is supposed to be a new form of reporter, a jack of all trades capable of tracking down news and recording it in various forms; someone competent in video and audio capture, photography, interviewing, story writing and editing. 

Some books and websites would have you believe that this is a new phenomenon brought about by media downsizing, the rise of internet news and the introduction of new technology. TechNewsWorld has described journalist Kevin Sites as the "granddaddy of APJs" however, the more I looked at this form of journalism during my first semester at uni, the more I was reminded of the work of Australian cameraman Neil Davis.

I think Davis was a backpack journalist forty years before the term was even thought of. Born in Tasmania in 1934, he learnt his craft at the Tasmanian Government Film Unit and the ABC before moving to South East Asia in 1964 to cover the various conflicts that were flaring up in the area. He usually worked alone, not wanting the responsibility of looking after a sound engineer, preferring to record his own sound as well as shooting film. He was also adept at doing stand-up reports in front of the camera and wrote copy when required.

In Vietnam he chose to cover the fighting with the South Vietnamese troops, believing that they were the ones doing the hardest fighting. This meant that he often had to walk for days at a time while out on patrols, carrying all of his camera and sound equipment and with no chance of helicopter evacuation if he was wounded. When other Western journalists left the country as North Vietnamese forces reached Saigon in 1975, Davis stayed behind and captured the iconic footage of Communist tanks driving through the gates of the Presidential Palace.

This is an excerpt from David Bradbury's 1980 documentary about Davis, "Frontline". 

Davis went on to cover wars in Africa and the Middle East, however with the introduction of video he was forced to work with a sound engineer who carried the heavy audio equipment. He was killed in Thailand in 1985, along with his soundman Bill Latch, while filming a short-lived coup.

If you want to read more about his fascinating career, try Tim Bowden's excellent biography of Neil Davis called "One Crowded Hour", a reference to the lines of a poem that Davis wrote in the front of all his work diaries, lines that he saw as his own personal motto: "One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name".