Category: Photojournalism

How to ensure your extinction: look at what newspapers are doing

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This week the Chicago Sun Times made what might just be one of the most clearly shorsighted decisions in its history: they let go of all of their photography staff.

Keep in mind that were are in the HEYDAY of photography.

January 10, 2020
Don’t Mourn, Organize!

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Why do photographers just take all the indignities that have befallen the industry in these past few years? This isn’t the first example of a publication letting go of staff photographers

January 10, 2020
Angry Chicago news photographer blasts Sun-Times for layoffs

Jim Romenesko

via Jim Romenesko: http://jimromenesko.com/2013/06/06/angry-chicago-photographer-blasts-sun-times-for-layoffs/

Veteran Chicago news photographer Phil Greer wrote this for his Facebook friends and gave me permission to share it with Romenesko readers

January 10, 2020
The front of the crowd

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often in a breaking story there is a crowd of citizen journalists all pointing at the action and recording it in intimate detail, and doing a fantastic job. But in front of them all is sometimes one individual, their back to the action, looking towards the crowd of onlookers and recording their response: whether one of joy, or sadness, surprise or terror. Some events need distilling down to an individual human scale for them to make sense to all of us.

January 10, 2020
Emerging Talent – Samuel Wilson

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The most difficult part is being okay with not knowing what is going to happen in the future. Maybe I’ll be able to find people who want my work, maybe I’ll have to wash dishes and live in my car, but as long as I can keep meeting new people and listening to their stories, I think I’ll be ok.

January 10, 2020
Marcus Bleasdale’s Zero Hour: From photography to the world of video games

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Marcus Bleasdale is always thinking about new ways to highlight the grim living conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and our own complicity in its people’s troubles. In 2009, he co-produced a comic book based on his images, and now he’s working with a team of games developers to create an immersive experience that will convey the complex reality. He speaks with Olivier Laurent

January 10, 2020
The Optimist: A profile of Aidan Sullivan

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As a director of photography, if you can convince the photographers you work with that you are 100 percent behind them in everything, they will give you 100 percent. I’ve always stuck up for my photographers – whether it was at the Sunday Times or Getty Images. You have to have that relationship with them because they are really vulnerable. They are only as good as their next picture. They are constantly soul-searching. They need support. They need someone to trust. That’s what I’ve always based my career on, and that’s why I have such a strong relationship with the photographers I’ve worked with. It’s my job to encourage, support and inspire them. I’ve been a photographer and I know how lonely a place that can be. I’ve been in difficult situations and know how scary that can be. For this profession to continue, we need to give as much support to the guys out there as we possibly can

January 10, 2020
Photography as Advocacy: Origins of a Journey

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Sometimes you can pinpoint the exact moment when you decide to change the rest of your life. For photographer Marcus Bleasdale, it happened one London morning in 1998 when he walked into the office where he was working as an investment banker. “Even at that point, I had long known I wouldn’t stay in banking, but that day there was just this trigger,” he recalled. “I didn’t even sit down, and I walked into my boss’s office and resigned.”

January 10, 2020
Oh, no! Patch editor realizes there’s hanky-panky going on in her pumpkin photo

Jim Romenesko

via Jim Romenesko: http://jimromenesko.com/2013/10/16/oh-no-patch-editor-realizes-theres-hanky-panky-going-on-in-her-pumpkin-photo/

I need your help ladies and gentleman. I appears a pumpkin photo I did not look at close enough — or maybe I’m just an old married lady — simulates, um, a carnal act. There is no way to delete a photo nationally in this gallery.

January 10, 2020
Eugene Richards’ Notes From the Road: The Bedroom

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There was almost a pleading quality to Reverend Landers’s voice when he asked if I would take his picture. “It will go right there,” he said, pointing to a patch of wallboard hung with angel wings made of crepe paper and a cross fashioned from scraps of cardboard. “I’d be proud to be so remembered and immortalized.”

January 10, 2020
Sleeping Dogs Lie

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somehow, publishers think they can afford to deliver sub-par stuff, and constantly spit in the face and dismiss the concerns of 50% of their potential customers is stunning. Like me, they think they’re awesome, but unlike me they aren’t

January 10, 2020
Middletown (NY) Times Herald-Record bosses are blasted for ‘heartless’ layoffs

Jim Romenesko

via Jim Romenesko: http://jimromenesko.com/2013/11/04/times-herald-record-bosses-are-blasted-for-heartless-layoffs/

They made us sign vows of silence to get our severance pay. I guess they could still charge me with breach of contract for even mentioning that. You know what? F*ck you, Times Herald-Record. Sue me to get your money back. Any newspaper that muzzles its own (former) staff members to execute a campaign that primarily targeted staffers who were 50 years or older and had at least a decade of service — people who earned higher salaries because of experience and seniority — deserves to lose the support of advertisers and subscribers who pay to get expert coverage

January 10, 2020
Chicago Sun-Times hires back four photographers

Jim Romenesko

via Jim Romenesko: http://jimromenesko.com/2013/12/03/chicago-sun-times-hires-back-four-photographers/

Ukrainian photographer Olya Morvan, who attended Raghu Rai’s workshop earlier this year, is the first Magnum Photos Workshop participant to be featured as part of the agency’s partnership with British Journal of Photography

January 10, 2020
More Questions For Reuters About The Death Of Molhem Barakat, Teenage War Photographer

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Reuters, a big-leagues news service owned by a $13 billion multinational corporation, is ducking critical questions about the death of a teenage war photographer who’d been selling pictures to the agency.

January 10, 2020
Thomas Dworzak: Mining For Memes On Instagram

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Following various hashtag threads, he came upon a series of unusual links, including one with pictures of dogs and cats dressed as the Pope. And, what fascinated him was that the people posting these pictures apparently weren’t aware that other people were dressing their pets as the Pope too.

January 10, 2020
Photojournalists’ images can speak louder than words

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The pictures. Photojournalism. Images that tell stories so rich you may not even need to read the words under the photos.

January 10, 2020
Does The NY Times’ Sochi Photo “Firehose” Do Photogs a Disservice?

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It funnels images by Times photographers and from the paper’s wire service feeds, and evidently there will be roughly 14,000 images per day coming through the, ahem, hose.

January 10, 2020
More Context, More Respect: On that Devastating Photo from Syria of the “Palestinian Refugee Camp”

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If you follow online news or social media, you are probably aware of this wrenching photo from Syria that gripped the world yesterday. This TIME headline reflected the language and the simple message transmitted by so many others:

One Picture Sums Up Syria’s Humanitarian Crisis

January 10, 2020
Witness: Andrea Bruce in Damascus

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I had no idea what to expect when I first entered the regime side of Syria’s bloody civil war. Images from inside the city of Damascus have been scarce and journalists are rarely granted legal access.

January 10, 2020
Amid more layoffs, Sun-Times rehires four photographers

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Rich Chapman, Brian Jackson, Al Podgorski and a fourth photographer whose name was not confirmed are expected to be rehired under terms of a contract settlement reached in November between Sun-Times Media and the Chicago Newspaper Guild.

January 10, 2020