August 1995: A correspondent and camera crew are dispatched to cover a battle between Bosnians and Serbs. What they send back is limited by what they can hear, see, and smell at the scene. They can't find out about the broader context. Since they have no way to refine what they've shot, once they've shot it, they have to send back an unedited package. They have to trust editors back home to insert any germane information from officialdom or to add other elements that properly belong in the story.

August 1999 (or thereabouts): A one-person crew (correspondent, camera operator, sound recordist, and editor, all combined in one journalist) is dispatched to cover a battle between Grinks and Orinks in, say, Ishmaelia. No longer limited to just what she finds at the scene, she is also able to download text from The Associated Press, video clips from a network news operation in New York City, audio clips from the BBC in London. She can then make her own decisions about what to include in and what to exclude from her report. She (yes, most new journalists these days are women) is truly a one-woman band, equipped with a formidable tool: a portable newsroom.

The harbinger of the portable newsroom is here; it's called a CamCutter. It is a portable though still bulky camera attached to a computer. Its magic lies in two words: "digital" and "nonlinear."

As a "digital" recorder, the CamCutter speaks in the parlance of computerdom -- ones and zeros. It can record broadcast-quality video on a pop-out, reusable, rewritable disk called a FieldPak. A FieldPak can store almost 20 billion ones and zeros -- fifteen to twenty minutes of video.

 The second key word, "nonlinear," means that the CamCutter/FieldPak combination records images to a computer disk and not to film or video tape. The only way to edit film is linearly -- by looking down the film for those expendable ten seconds, those 300 frames, and literally cutting them out, with what amounts to scissors, and splicing back together what's left. Video tape is also linear: one edits tape only by rebuilding the whole segment, top to bottom, linearly.

With digital recording, however, a passage can be inserted or deleted by the equivalent of clicking a mouse -- like editing with WordPerfect or XyWrite. And it can be done -- only roughly, so far -- by the reporter/editor where the news is happening.

CamCutter was introduced at the recent convention of the National Association of Broadcasters in Las Vegas. According to Avid Technology, a Massachusetts company that together with the Japanese TV-camera maker Ikegami created the CamCutter, two hundred units have already been sold, sight unseen, to news organizations, although the company would not identify any of the buyers. The units cost $40,000 to $60,000 apiece. The first ones are due to be delivered by the end of the year.

Most of the news executives who bought the new devices surely see them as cost savers. Sending one person into the field costs much less than two people, or three or even four. Recording to a rewritable digital disk costs less than recording to hundreds of video cassettes. The editing process can be exponentially faster without editors, and a lot of people in the business journalism has become don't care much about editing, anyway.

But beyond cost saving, the CamCutter is seen by some as the start of a paradigm shift in the way news is covered. The next likely development will be more miniaturization of portable batteries and sending and receiving equipment. Satellite send/receive units already come briefcase-sized. Soon, someone will invent an even tinier "dish," one that can fit inside the CamCutter and, shazam, it will be able to capture digital signals from anywhere and everywhere -- New York, London, Rangoon, the moon.

The ramifications for the way news will be covered, edited, and processed are fascinating. No longer will the field reporter be "blind." She is suddenly empowered in all sorts of new and interesting ways. One day she'll be able to transmit her reports directly to a satellite and, inevitably, directly to a distribution system, in effect a video Internet. No editors. And anyone with a computer and modem can look at her report, as a supplement -- or substitute -- for the standard media version.

By the same token, anyone who wants to will be able to buy a portable newsroom, go out and cover X and, without having to check in with the gods of journalism in Atlanta or New York, go directly to air with . . . whatever.

The questions that such empowerment brings are many. Does the skeptical scrutiny of a seasoned moderator, or editor, make a difference? Does the imprimatur of CNN or The New York Times mean anything? Will the consumer of news in 1999 or 2009 care whether experienced professionals have scrutinized the work of a reporter? Or whether the reporters are trained and proven in their trade? The idea of paying $5,400,000,000 for CBS, as Westinghouse is seeking to do, takes on a whole new meaning if just about anybody's reports on Bosnia carry as much credibility as those of Tom Fenton of what used to be CBS.

American media tend to share a sameness of outlook about what is news and what is journalism. The era of anybody-as-journalist just might possibly challenge all of that.

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