Newspapers are Dead. Long Live Newspaper Photojournalism.

Something to mull over as 2007 beckons...

Bill Watkins, the multi-billionaire CEO of the Seagate hard drive company on newspapers:

"People worry that newspapers are going out of business. So what? It's the content that's important. No one gives a shit about the delivery mechanism.

Think about mail. You had the pony express, truck delivery, airmail, email. You don't care how it gets to you.

I read more now than I ever did, but I get it off my PC. I don't need to go down to the end of the driveway and pick up the newspaper. It's the content that's most important."

Admit it - unless you're an Oxford don or Brian Sewell, you probably do a lot of your reading and looking at images now on the Web. I know I do.

I recently gave a talk at the Guardian Newsroom about what this means for photojournalism - because we have to get away from this incredibly deeply entrenched (and increasingly redundant) idea that a photojournalist is someone who produces 'photo-essays' for newspapers and magazines.

Bizarrely, the enormous audience drift from print to the online space is seen in some photojournalistic circles as a 'crisis'...it ignores the massive audience potential of the Internet and seeks to solve the crisis, by retreating further into a hermetically sealed world of books, galleries and subsidies from various grants and competitions.

The Internet isn't a panacea, of course - so newspapers getting into 'multimeeja' by throwing videocameras at their journalists and expecting that to do the trick for them on the Web...just isn't going to work.

I recently spent nearly two days painstakingly trying to edit together some video taken by a journalist, because with the best will in the world, his main job is writing, so shooting video was probably pretty low on his priority list. But that's not the journalists problem - it's the newspapers problem, by having a 'convergence' strategy which (IMO) is deeply flawed, because at it's heart, it's bean-counter led.

I can already hear the money-men..."If we can give journalists DV cameras, why do we need you?"

Do you have an answer for them? Well, do ya? Because if you shoot for newspapers, you'll probably be hearing a lot of that in the coming year.

Here's my answer - so the scribes can write and shoot?

"So what? It's the content that's important. No one gives a shit about the delivery mechanism"

Can they communicate in Mandarin? Arabic? Portuguese?

I can.

Or rather my pictures can - because the Internet is increasingly, both a GLOBAL and a VISUAL medium. Somebody on the bus in Mumbai (with their newly acquired mobile phone, Sony PSP or iPod video) is gonna understand my images a damn sight easier than reading something in English.

The point about 'multimedia' and 'convergence' is...it's just that. It's different medias converging across the board - any newspaper hoping to successfully migrate to the Web, is gonna have to think about going toe-to-toe with TV stations, radio and websites...around the World.

So the newspapers 'content' had better be good, because if it ain't...well, there's plenty of other places on the Web to check out, and I won't be coming back to your paper anytime soon.

Newspapers are not You Tube. If they wish to keep their existing readership, and expand that readership into the Web, they need to produce visual content that reflects the existing ethos and qualities of the paper.

If not, the audience will simply go somewhere else - because if all newspapers give them is monkey-vid they already see uploaded onto Goo-Tube by the boat-load, why the hell should they bother with newspapers at all?

As photojournalists,  it's about time we stopped running around shouting "the sky's falling in", and stepped up and lobbied for our core strength...which is having a good pair of eyes.

But doesn't video mean those eyes are redundant? Where does video leave us when the Decisive Moment can be screen-grabbed?

Yeah, well, you still have to GET the moment first - and after 15 years of shooting I still sweat about getting it on every job...but 15 years visual experience means at least I know where to start looking for it.

David Leeson, a Pulitzer-Prize winning photojournalist who's been shooting video for six years:

“...increases in the popularity of still motor drive speeds has not been met with an equal growth in photographers able to capture ‘the moment.’

The bottom line is you either get the moment or you don't.

If you can't find it with an 8fps still motor drive, I'm confused as to why people think a shooter would be able to find it at 30fps with video.

The future of the traditional newspaper is looking pretty risky these days, but the health of solid visual reporting is getting stronger every day, by those of us who value visual journalism and ethical storytelling above and beyond a 35mm.

The purpose of the photojournalist is to visually report with honest and ethical stories - and, hopefully, change lives. It's the people that matter - not your photos.

Your 35mm has always been nothing more than a tool for getting a job done.

You may love it...but it isn't your purpose in life as a journalist."

Comments

[Daniel]

Sion, how many of your recent stories/submitted images were stills from a HD video stream?

[Sion Touhig]

When I shot my very first videos for the Sunday Telegraph and Times Educational Supplement, they asked for stills from the video to use in the paper..and I didn't even shoot HDV, but standard definition DV. For the Telegraph, I had to shoot some video in a way to produce clean screengrabs, as DV won't automatically give you a clean frame every time. The stills were used in the paper and on the paper's website alongside the video - as well as (in the Telegraph's case) the conventional stills I'd shot with a Canon 5D, so shooting DV needn't necessarily preclude you from shooting stills. They can be complimentary rather than overlapping.

However, HDV stills are already being used in US newspapers - some across 5 broadsheet columns.

The point I'm trying to make, is using screengrabs is inevitably going to be used by the bean-counter tendancy to bury us...they think.

But if they do, IMO, they'll be digging their own grave. I'm old enough to remember the last paradigm shift - digital photography...while we were all 'waiting for it to catch up with film' we got slaughtered by the moneymen and the beancounters who seized upon it's potential (not the visuals, but the distribution model) for their own benefit.

This time, it would be handy if we could actually stand up for what we do best...which at the end of the day, has VERY LITTLE to do with what kind of cameras we use.

[John Armstrong-Millar]

Well said.
It's all about content! and I completely agree about massive audience potential. The only problem is getting them to pay for it.

[Andy]

Great post.

I agree. We do need to get out of this medium first attitude in all aspects of journalism if we are going to make the best of the multiple media world.

One point though. Video has never really been about the decisive moment for me. From an editorial perspective, photography is the only medium for that ‘one image’ that tells a story. Video is about getting to that point. Photography is the ball in the back of the net, video is the run up the field.

If people are shooting video in the hope they catch the decisive moment – and I suppose the bean counters would say that with video you give a journo a 1in 30 chance of getting it rather than a photogs 1 in 8 – they are shooting it for the wrong reasons.

The long tail will catch up with the bean counters. All we need to do is find ways of hanging in there till it does.

[Jeff Wasserman]

Well said Sion. I have been evangelizing video at our paper. We are strictly in the midst of a changing medium, not profession. Great photojournalists will still be
great photojournalists no matter what the medium. Some will make the transistion easily and others will not ... just like the transitions from B&W to colour and film to digital.
Best,
Jeff Wasserman
Photo Editor
National Post

[Michael Shaw]

I, too, feel your take is spot-on.

I believe, like Andy, that still image is going to be just as important, if not more so, than video in the on-line news environment.

I also think you're going to see a lot of convergence in the next year to eighteen months between blogs, and newspapers and news magazine (with the more progressive of the latter already underway in the morph into hybrid print/electronic editorial entities).

Also, you're going to see a lot more "news/web/blog" combo sites (don't know what else to call them, as yet) either emanate from scratch (in the case of the new politico.com project in D.C., for example) or combinations/mergers of higher profile stand-alone political blogs with newspaper and political "on-line" magazines (with the impetus to combine coming from the blog-side, possibly in combo with venture $$$).

The bottom line (pardon the pun) is that these products are going to generate a strong demand for visual content. If the business model behind content usage is not there yet, I wouldn't be too worried at this point.

My sense is that, with some maturity of the market, new content opportunities will emerge for the "visual-journalist" (including new editorial forms and formats beyond simply single still image, still galleries and full motion video) -- also allowing for opportunities, by capable visual folk, to provide written narrative (including news reporting, feature- and "mini feature"-like accounts, and other new forms of "visual backstory").

Overall, I think you'll see opportunities emerge to a degree (and in a diversity) never seen or imagined before.

Sion: great work BTW.

Michael Shaw
BAGnewsNotes.com

[David Paul Carr]

As a photographer, the problem I'm beginning to see is that when I talk to a client about the possibilities of making a still image + soundtrack piece with Soundslides or Flash I invariably get asked "why not just use video?". And, when I talk about video, the question is "why use a photographer to produce moving images when there are plenty of well-equipped and experienced film-makers out there?".
There are certainly going to be new opportunities to place content via the web. Unfortunately, the only way that I envisage photographers being able to participate is if the amount of potential points of diffusion increases (thus fragmenting market share) to a degree where the budgets available for paying for production and distribution of content will be so low as to preclude the use of experienced and expensive technicians. The still photographer / videographer will be a fall-back budget solution.
It's going to be like cable TV - increased choice but not enough viewers and money to produce anything good.
As content providers cater for ever-smaller interest groups, their business structure will become less and less viable and what is on offer increasingly amateur. Ultimately, there will be a re-grouping as we have seen in any other media where there is a potential market to be exploited.

[Mark Zanzig]

Excellent post.

I agree that the Web is a visual medium (much more so than a daily newspaper). I also agree that video will be the next step towards online news consumption, and yes, the typical scribe will be unable to do the job, just as I would be currently unable to shoot a 4 minute news piece, complete with narrative, cutting, and what have you. While this may not be rocket science, it still needs expert knowledge. We -as photographers- are certainly better prepared that writers.

So your outlook provides some hope for those (including me) who are currently too much depending on print. Unfortunately, in my experience online media tend to not pay the same amount print media used to. (Going through agencies does not help IMO as many photos are acquired by print media.)

So the question is - how can we as photojournalists monetize our work online?

[Sion]

Firstly we need to stop thinking of the web as a cheap add on to the print product. This has been the way both we and publishers have thought of it in the past, and it has meant both we and they have charged and accepted low fees for the work. I've long argued that in print, dealing in digital images means we have to price by usage, not by the amount of time billed (the day or half day rate). Whden websites are now getting millions of hits, sometime even more than the paper - and those hits can be logged and tracked - its not beyond the wit of man to develop some kind of rising fee structure based on that. Its up to us to argue for this though, because you can be sure the publishers wont give it to us. if 'Content is King' it needs to be paid for.