In a time long before the three new W’s joined journalism’s original five, a television photographer slammed me to the floor of a court clerk’s office. Unfortunately for me, a mere print reporter, I was the sole obstacle between an arrogant camera jockey and the sweet spot to video a felony suspect posting bond.

Who was I to argue my right to be in the front row? I was able to report only what my eyes saw, my ears heard and my mind perceived. No film at 11 from me.

The experience bruised my knee and my ego, and it was good for a round of lamentation and beer with fellow print journos, joined by a sympathetic radio reporter or two. We all knew - well maybe not the radio guys – that we were the better reporters, the brilliant writers, the owners of detail and, most often, the first to get the big story.

The real story, we knew in our hearts as we unfolded the day’s paper, lay in our ink-smudged hands. Even if it more often first saw the light of day on television.

Well, what goes around comes around.

Enter the Internet, the blog, Google Video, and $250 video cameras the size of a deli sandwich.

And today, the sweet spot belongs to us. We can get it first, get it right, fill in the details and offer up video on demand. Who wants to wait until 11?

Finally, we can beat television at its own game.

But how do we rally the troops, pump up the team, take the bull by the horns (and stop me from writing all these clichés?)

In Quill magazine’s March 2008 issue, Ron Sylvester shares his pilgrimage into backpack journalism. (“How one old reporting dog learned new multimedia tricks”)

Two things strike me about Sylvester’s tale of mojo: 1) How his curiosity, need or obsession to know the unknown – a trait inherent in all of us in this field - drives him to multimedia proficiency; and 2) How his learning becomes a group project in his newsroom. People in roles often isolated, and occasionally at odds, suddenly are experimenting, advising, tweaking, encouraging and learning from each other. What an energizer.

One more thing strikes me about this opportunity to embrace change in a fluid industry: Now, with our cameras, our tripods and our YouTube accounts, we traditional print journalists can push back. Er, metaphorically, of course.