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"As a photographer or videographer, I'm not better than my colleagues who do only one that job, but I know if I'm put into the environment, I can provide everything to the audience on my own," said Kevin Sites, also known as the "granddaddy of backpack journalists", for his versatility in writing, video and photo taking and online transmission in warzones by himself.
He is currently working as the associate professor of practice at the Journalism school of the University of Hong Kong. Before heading off to Afghanistan as his final warzone reporting trip, he shared his stories with the APD about his career pathway as a multimedia reporter, and how he made use of his tools in completion of a series of immersive reports.
Visions to new media reporting
Having received a long list of awards, Sites is best known for his employment by Yahoo, one of the world's largest Internet Portal in 2004, as the first reporter.
According to a New York Times' report, in the course of conducting his news project in conflict areas for Yahoo, Sites wrote a 600- to 800-word dispatch each day and produce a slide show of 5 to 10 digital photographs on site in the conflict zone. He also narrated audio travelogues in several forms of video - relatively unedited footage posted several times a week, and once a week, a more traditional video report, edited in the style of a network news broadcast.
Sites was also the host of regular online chats with Yahoo users who posted comments on message boards.
He said audiences nowadays do have extra expectations to news reports.
"We live in a 3D world. We are not flat on papers. We are vibrant in the society. Not only could you read in text, can also see faces and voices, alongside text narrations," he said.
To achieve this, entertainment elements have to be added onto plain, and sometimes tasteless news reports.
"Story telling is an art. We can't ask the audience to watch or read simply because we want them to. There is an aspect of entertainment to it, if we want to be viewed and read," he said.
Moreover, the stories have to be accurate and promptly available.
"Journalists today faces a dilemma: We need to tell an accurate story. But I can't spend a day or a month with a subject, I may only have 20-30 minutes. So I have to condense this very important information. We have to do a 'hyper' conversation, something that's happening on a condensed time period."
Sites said with the technology available nowadays, the small digital cameras, the software that allow us to edit the images, to reduce the size of the files, and to make it more interesting in terms of structural narrative, and the ability to transmit this to the internet and to make it available to the public through social media, both criteria could be met. "This is an exciting time to be alive."
But in reality, most Journalism graduates are trained with only one or two of the bunch of skills, and they have to spend their lifetime honing one single specialties.
Despite being sophisticated with the use of a series of multimedia techniques, Sites stressed that he understands that his utmost strengths lie in reporting and writing, and he firmly grips the credo that notes and details are the nitty-gritty which keep the story upright.
"If we are better at something naturally, we should certainly amplify. That's the selling point to our employer," he added ,"but we should also learn other things, to do our subject justice.
"As a photographer or videographer, I'm not better than my colleagues who do only one that job, but I know if I'm put into the environment, I can provide everything to the audience on my own," Sites said.
He said many young journalists are very good at technicalities, but they may not be better reporters. "Those technical skills won't allow them to tell a story effectively. They must have an understanding of what narrative is," Sites said, taking his warzone interviewing experiences as an example.
"I wouldn't take out any equipment in the first place. I'd talk to a person that I had eye contact with, and gain trust. Perhaps I'd take out my notepad first," he said. "Without his trust, I won't be able to complete the story with every bit of information I need. This is something precious."
"Only then, I'd take out my camera, or take some still photos." Sites said. "Only when it came to dynamic situations, such as refugee movement from a conflict zone would I videotape.
"Not everyone intrinsically understands what the structure of story-telling is," said Sites. This is especially so for war correspondents, who must understand the "conflicts" in front of them.
"They must create a structure that exploits the conflict to expose ability. Is it man against man, man against system, man against nature, man against himself? Exploit means allows the audience to understand what you are doing.
"New media is just media for all of us right now. I always consider myself a storyteller first. New media just another tool to do so," said Sites.
Nonetheless, Sites' manipulation of the "tool" did not come naturally. He went through a painstaking process when he started picking up the technical skills for multimedia reporting; his learning curve was "very steep".
"I'm not trained in it. When I first learning it, I was at my late 30s." said Sites, "But I knew I must adapt to it."
He said he encountered difficulties from time to time when he taught himself those unfamiliar stuffs from scratch; the most hard-hitting barrier to cross was the resistance to try new things. But he foresaw the sweets while he was weathering the bitter.
"New things are hard. Students may have resistance to it initially, but once they understand how these help enhance their story telling ability, as well as their marketability to get jobs, they do enjoy it. In fact, they may find it enjoyable,"
In Sites view, in the era with immense exposure to the Internet, it would be much easier for youngsters to have access to new technicalities.
"I think young people are very adapt to teaching themselves. They are comfortable with Internet which they grew up with throughout their entire life. So they know what a video story looks like," he said.
He once again reemphasized the importance of story-telling.
"After all the initial entry point for is being a writer. They may not be good at writing, but they might be able to do it with a camera. Visual storytelling is just important, if not more important," he said.
Whether they are learning in a formal course or not, they are confident to use the technologies that are available to them.
"Most of them have been using social media. When we break down social media, it's about sharing stories, stories of our lives. We naturally learn and become storytellers with social media, in whatever form." Sites said.
Neither is equipment is a big obstacle to sharing stories. "You don't need an expensive camera to be an effective story teller," Sites said. To him, even phones with camera features could be helpful. "They give us the ability to share at some level, or to manipulate the images with photo filters, or to make them more original."
Last shot on frontline
Sites will be leaving in late June for Afghanistan, where he kicked off his multimedia warzone reporting career to witness the historical time of the American troops pulling out of the war torn state. This will mark his full stop of years of war correspondence career.
But this time, he will focus on writing instead.
"Because now I'm getting old," said Sites with a loud self-teasing laughter, "I'll carry half as much as I did before, and reduce redundancy in my backpack."
"I'm hoping to close the loop on my reporting, going back after a dozen years of my first trip to Afghanistan, to look at what's changed since I had been there, as U.S. troops pull out of Afghanistan.
After wrapping up years of frontline reporting career, Sites will be back in Hong Kong, and return to his post as a J-school professor. But he stressed that he will not stop reporting.
"Reporting is my blood," he said firmly. "We have a responsibility to do both teaching an reporting.
He said he will focus on reporting through books rather than daily news in the future, which be more contemplative and analytic. China and Asia, where he barely visited as a reporter, are of his central interest.
"China is going to be one of the most significant nations in the future," he said, "Hong Kong was is a good junking off point, not only for China, but also for other Asian countries."
Because language barrier, Sites rarely learned about the history of the country in-depth. But as a veteran journalist, he looks forward to a more open Chinese Journalism
"The internet has dropped all of the borders. There are still firewalls in China, but they are coming down.
"All nations have a sense of censorship; in the U.S., we also have self-censorship. What we have to realize is that censorship by no means serves the public well. Only unfettered Journalism can provide that good information."
