The Death of Photojournalism: 1 Day Later

Dirck Halstead thought that maybe he came off as sounding more bleak than he had intended in our post yesterday, so he followed up with this much cheerier email we think is well worth sharing:

I am afraid that I have become increasingly realistic and therefore pessimistic about the future of our trade, which is not really my nature.

I find that when I get in these moods, the best thing for me to do is to go out and speak to young people. I had that chance today. Cornell University sponsors a summer program for what they consider to be "the brightest high school students in the land."

They split them up in three groups of twenty, and one of the groups is spending the summer here at [University of Texas].

I was asked to talk to them . These are not photojournalism wannabes. They are, however, at the exact age that I decided to run off to Guatemala for my first LIFE story. So I took it seriously, and after showing them some pictures, spent the next hour just talking about journalism and what a wonderful career it is to aspire to, that will open so many doors to so many different kinds of people.

They were very attentive and asked very good questions (which you don't normally get from college students), and the way I left it with them was this:

"Most of you will now be going off to four years in a college or university. Many of you have scholarships already. Thank God for this opportunity at this time, because while you are in school these next few years, EVERYTHING will change. From journalism, to business, to world affairs, to how crops are harvested. This will be the period of the 'big reset.' If you can huddle inside those ivy cloisters, do so. Bar the door. Ride it out.

"Because when you emerge in 2015, a lot of things will have been settled. There will be opportunities which have scarcely been thought of, and your time in college will allow you to prepare for this new world. Above all, don't be afraid. Dare to dream, and to work to make those dreams come true. The new future will be entrusted to you. Use it well."

Halstead's original article ("Revisiting the Death of Photojournalism, Ten Years Later") appears in the July issue of The Digital Journalist, the monthly online magazine for visual journalism that he has published for the past twelve years -- itself an indicator of his ongoing passion for, and commitment to, our eternally evolving field.

The Death of Photojournalism: 10 Years Later

The July issue of The Digital Journalist is online, featuring a gloomy essay by editor/publisher Dirck Halstead (right): "Revisiting the Death of Photojournalism, Ten Years Later."

Way back in 1999, I wrote an editorial lamenting how difficult it was becoming to pursue a life in photojournalism. Budgets were being slashed at the newsmagazines for photography, entry-level jobs at newspapers were becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, and once such an internship was secured, it was hard to move up the ladder. Compared to the glory days of photojournalism in the 1970s, the situation was looking bleak.

As I reread that article recently, I realized that what I was talking about then were some cracks in the dam. Today, the whole damned dam is gone.

Halstead's lament about the demise of suitable outlets for photojournalism, notably print newsweeklies, is more pertinent than ever -- along with his campaign, then and now, to encourage still photographers to augment their skills with audio and video so that they can be transferred to the Web. (He applies the term "Platypus" to the new breed of hybrid photojournalist/videojournalist.)

And even though videojournalism struggles as media outlets withdraw resources, Halstead is hopeful:

In a recent Platypus class, my students asked me, "Why would you be a photojournalist today?" I answered, "You have to be crazy."

I have always considered being crazy as important to a photographer as being curious. Constitutionally, we thrive on chaos and challenge. Being a photojournalist is more a calling than a trade. Those people who will do anything to come back with a story will be out there shooting for a long time.

Reuters Publishes Its Videojournalism Guidelines Online

Much is being made of the fact that Reuters has published its full handbook online. It's a useful compendium of journalism considerations, ranging from prose style to ethics guidelines.

As we clicked through the various sections, what caught our attention, of course, was the "Brief Guide to the Standards and Values of Reuters Video News" and "The Complete Reuters Video News Handbook."

A lot of it is basic journalism principles combined with plain common sense. But, as often happens when you try to define and codify these things, it veers into areas that aren't as neatly black and white as news organizations (and their audiences) would like them to be.

For instance, here's a sticky issue it tries to address:

"Never alter a still or moving image beyond the requirements of normal image enhancement."

Even though that's listed as one of the "10 Absolutes of Reuters Journalism," any professional practitioner will tell you that there's nothing "absolute" about it, as long as the concept of "normal" is open to wide interpretation. Nevertheless:

We have a duty to show the scene of any story accurately without adding or removing – either physically or electronically – any contents. Reuters Television staff must do only what is minimally necessary to improve the technical quality of video. Our staff must never manipulate or add/remove the contents of video. Audio must never be added which may affect the editorial interpretation of a sequence or story.

And speaking of audio, here's a morbidly fascinating precept, that stands out so brazenly in its specificity as to make you wonder whether such a thing actually happened in 1963:

"NEVER add the sound of a gunshot on mute coverage of the assassination of a president."

***
In an age when the "democratization" of our profession is blurring the boundaries of what constitutes journalism, it is refreshing to wade through a document that at least attempts to distinguish good from bad, and right from wrong. So bravo to Reuters for establishing and publicly disseminating a set of guidelines that deserve to be followed -- even if, like all moral beacons, they are necessarily subjective.

Take some time to look it over yourself, and please let us know what you think.

What Would You Pay to Access NYTimes.com?

The New York Times is surveying subscribers to determine if they'd be willing to pay $5 a month to access content on its NYTimes.com Website, which is currently free of charge. The newspaper is also testing a 50 percent discount scheme ($2.50/month) for those who retain their home-delivery print subscription.

Read reports from Bloomberg, Poynter, and Paid Content.

Our question: What if all online videojournalism and multimedia (and of course advertising) was offered free of charge, and you had to pay to access the rest of a newspaper's online content (text, images)?

What if newspapers invested sufficient resources to create topnotch video stories as an inducement to lure viewers through the front door, and then required them to pay to visit all the other rooms in the media castle? Videojournalism, after all, is their most customized (and least easily duplicated) editorial asset.

That would build a substantial audience for all those currently neglected and underappreciated video stories -- which, to our thinking, is the storytelling form that best maximizes the Web medium's strengths.

What New Media Has in Common with Jell-o

Did you have any idea how fascinating Jell-o is? Not just the product, but its colorful history. It's the subject of an engaging chapter in the new bestseller, "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," by Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson.

Jell-o, a 19th century invention, was arguably the first product to exploit the concept of "free" as a successful marketing technique -- not by giving out free samples, but rather by printing tens of thousands of pamphlets with Jell-O recipes for its salesmen to distribute to homemakers for free.

Gelatin comes from flesh and bones. It's the translucent, glutinous substance that skims to the top when you boil meat. But if you collect enough of it and purify it, adding color and flavor, it becomes something else: Jell-O. A clean powder in a packet, far removed from its abattoir origins of marrow and connective tissue.

After its inventor had failed to make a go of marketing it, he sold the company to an enterprising businessman named Orator Frank Woodward, who devised the free pamphlet scheme.

Thus was born one of the most powerful marketing tools of the twentieth century: giving away one thing to create demand for another. What Woodward understood was that "free" is a word with an extraordinary ability to reset consumer psychology, create new markets, break old ones, and make almost any product more attractive. He also figured out that "free" didn't mean profitless. It just meant that the route from product to revenue was indirect, something that would become enshrined in the retail playbook as the concept of a "loss leader."

Anderson, who is also the author of "The Long Tail," was recently a guest on NPR's "Fresh Air" with host extraordinaire Terry Gross. He discussed "Free" in the context of media institutions struggling with how to survive in a world where their product has been seemingly devalued to zero.

Among the topics Anderson addresses:

• Why the traditional advertising model hasn't worked on the Web;
  
• Why media outlets haven't yet figured out how to customize video ads and match them to appropriate videos that showcase them in appropriate environments;
  
• How the Wall Street Journal is successfully employing the "free-mium" model, which invites everyone through the front door at no charge, and gives away an appreciable amount of content, and then charges for niche or premium content;
  
• How each medium copies the previous one -- radio was TV with pictures; the Web was print with hyperlinks -- and then builds to the next plateau;
  
• Where all the money really went when Craigslist decimated the newspaper classified ad business (Hint: it didn't go to Craigslist);
  
• The impact of "free" on the quality of journalism, with so many fewer professionals on the beat, domestically and internationally;
  
• Given that newspapers are dying but, despite e-books, print books are thriving, what is the role of the print magazine in this age?
  
• Will financial desperation destroy that formerly sacred impermeable wall between editorial and advertising, given that Google has successfully married church and state? (Or was our long-held assumption -- that editorial/ad adjacency connotes the possibility of corruption -- erroneous in the first place?)

For journalists and videojournalists struggling with the question of how to make a living in a world where their products are being given away for no money, this half-hour interview is well worth a listen.

Video Stories Deserve Updates

We've often noted how unfortunately rare it is that newspapers follow up on their hard-hitting video stories.

The media has a notoriously short memory, and there are so many great video stories that capture a situation so well that they leave you wondering what will happen next.

Such was the case with the Los Angeles Times' heartbreaking video about Jani Schofield, a 6-year-old schizophrenic, and her beleaguered but devoted parents. We showcased "A Place for Jani" on the KobreGuide's Los Angeles Times channel.

Today the newspaper paper laudably provided an update, "For Jani Schofield, some progress -- and major setbacks."

It is not a video, as we might have hoped, but a text article. Alas, the news is not good -- and so, under the circumstances, we can understand why it might have been more difficult to have sought and gained video access.

Naturally we hope the situation takes a turn for the better, for Jani and her family, and look forward to seeing a video update with some hopeful news.

Bland Titles

Don't hate us for asking this, but why is it that some of the most interesting video stories have the most boring titles?

In an apparent effort to sound weighty and grandiose, they often end up sounding, well, meaningless.

Look at this random sampling of titles of video stories that we're otherwise proud to showcase on KobreGuide, and you'll see what we mean:

Great Responsibility, Looking Back, A Life Alone, Chain of Life, A Meaningful New Mission, Stories to Learn By, A Fighting Chance, Guitar Man, Science Homework, Part of the Family, Campaign, A Place to Call Home, Wait for Me, Popular Science, A Man's World, A World of Words, A Dirty Job, Left Behind, Hard Times, Unusual Friendship, Remember Me, Age of Uncertainty, The Bottom Line, Uprooted, A New Dawn, Friends for Life, Common Ground, Breaking the Silence, Rapid Descent, Black Market, Blind Ambition, Learning to Fall, Last Goodbye...

Again, the stories themselves are terrific. But their titles? Big yawn!

We suspect that a lot of the problem has to do with the fact that the newspapers' regular headline writers, schooled and seasoned in marrying colorful nouns with muscular verbs, aren't assigned the task of titling videos. And so they're just given short descriptive labels by the videojournalists themselves, who are traditionally more visual than verbal.

Compounding the problem is that the title you see chyroned at the beginning of the video ("A Doctor's Tale") frequently does not match the title adjacent to the video player ("A Medical Marvel"). And they vie with each other for awfulness.

Another common syndrome is that many video titles can't be appreciated, or sometimes even understood, until after you've seen the video! (Which you're not likely to see, because the title is offputtingly cryptic!)

We realize that, in a newspaper's quest for dispassionate objectivity, there is a proclivity for taking the "just the facts, ma'am" approach to writing titles.

But don't newspaper editors realize that a catchy or intriguing title can entice a potential viewer to click the "Play" button, and thereby exponentially increase the size of a video's audience? Whereas lackluster titles can be a potent eyeball deterrent?

We cast our vote for assigning the task of video title writing to the same folks who are charged with writing Page One grabbers. The best videos -- like those spotlighted on KobreGuide -- deserve nothing less.

After all, if you're going to spend days, or even weeks, shooting and editing a top-notch video, why not put a few more minutes of thought and effort into naming your baby before sending it out into the world?

Seen a really clever or compelling video title lately? Please share it with us. Quick, before we doze off again...