The Demise of the Professional Photojournalist

[arigram]

http://citmedia.org/blog/2006/12/04/the-demise-of-the-professional-photojournalist/

Maybe the artist-photojournalist will survive alone then.

 

[Pinholemaster]

The sky is falling, the sky is falling.

Let's see what really happens. I remember local TV asking people to submit their videos of breaking news a few years back, but it never took off.

 

[firecracker]

I think there's a difference between good ones and band ones in this category. The good ones take all voices from all peoples and their communities from all round the world because they have serious issues but not been heard well enough. Here's one:

http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml

The Indy Media Center has been around for a while providing the information that matters to us. It's grassroots and based on activism, so the stuff there is not well organized, but you can get what you need to be aware of.

Meanwhile the bad ones are just part of the exploitatons conducted by the corporate media today. They are lazy and they want some non-journalist people to feed them news stories at no cost. CNN, for instance, without any question does that.

Also, there are a number of websites that claim as "citizen journalism" and run news-like stories, but you examine them a bit critically, they are just some free ad space to be filled in, so they basically ask freebees to sumbit their writings, again at no cost or with a very minimum pay.

 

[firecracker]

I forgot to point out that the "citizen journalism" is probably a new business model. I'm sure there are some big historical moments being caught in amateurs' camcorders and the cameras on the celluar phones that many people have today, but if that's replacing the jobs of what real pro journalists do, we're in real trouble getting the news! Who does the fact-checking and the editorial process anyway?

There's one called "Oh My News" in South Korea. I heard it started out with a good intention of citizen journalism for the people in South Korea:

http://english.ohmynews.com/index.asp

But when it got bigger and came to Japan, it sort of changed to something else...

 

[Daniel_OB]

It was my last try. Just before parting to Iraq, there was a meeting and “they” set very clear definition what and how to shoot. I just spat on the floor and quit. And what I think about “modern” pj and their intelligence is not for public. However, there are, and always will be PJ amateurs that shoot and never hand it to mass media nowadays. They are very different story.
www.Leica-R.com

 

[haris]

There is another thing. PJ's, no matter photographers or videographers do honestly theire job, but media hous they working for decide not to publish/broadcast or censor theire job. Of course, not to disturb viewers/readers during breakfast/dinner...

 

[ehparis]

The news is more than a series of events strung together electronically. You can buy all the sounds and all the pictures but not have the story.

 

[removed account4]

many of the small "local" papers give the reporter a camera and ask them to take the photographs that go along with the articles. i interviewed with a small paper a few weeks ago and they told me the most they could pay their photograpers was $35 per assignment - no mileage, no compensation for reprints --- if they publish a "news-hound" they probably just publish with the by-line as the only compensation, and the hound is happy to be published.

 

[bjorke]

Recently it was revealed that celphone companies, for "security reasons," have been fiting the cameras in the phones with circuits that can be turned off on-demand by local provider actions -- e.g., your camera will not function when inside a courthouise, or perhaps even when within 100 meters of Victoria Beckham.

Citizen journalists will thus be ensured to get lots of spot news of falling bridges and such but photos that challenge "the official story" will be harder than ever to find.

 

[haris]

Recently it was revealed that celphone companies, for "security reasons," have been fiting the cameras in the phones with circuits that can be turned off on-demand by local provider actions -- e.g., your camera will not function when inside a courthouise, or perhaps even when within 100 meters of Victoria Beckham.

Citizen journalists will thus be ensured to get lots of spot news of falling bridges and such but photos that challenge "the official story" will be harder than ever to find.

Well, there is allways good old Minox