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The Demise of the Professional Photojournalist
Dan Gillmor has a piece up on his Center for Citizen Media blog about the coming decline in the venerable professions of photojournalism and videography. It's hard to fault Gillmor's argument that the ubiquity of Net-connected cameras and cell phones will mean that, for breaking news at least, a pro will rarely if ever be the ones who capture the shot or the footage that gets widely published and reprinted. The comments to Gillmor's post are worth reading. One reader pulls out the figure that a billion camera phones will be in use globally by 2008.
One might make an argument for this, but I am not quite so sure this is the "demise of the professional photojournalist" for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the ability to effectively communicate. Sure a picture can tell a thousand words, but that photograph needs to be placed in context. I take lots of photos that describe what I see, do and where I go, but I would never think of myself as a professional journalist. These images for me are a means to communicate and keep in touch with family and friends (a blog, right?), not to disseminate the news to the rest of the world. The fact that sometimes images from my site do resonate with news agencies/institutions or individuals around the world is cool, but it is a rarity that I get requests for re-publication (one every three months or so) and it is not how I make my living.
Additionally, there is also the issue of ethics that most professional publications usually get right, but there are the admitted occasional screw-ups. Usually however, there are issues of image/video provenance to deal with that may not always reflect reality ("I found it on the Internets, so it must be true!") that editorial boards put through a vetting process to filter out much of the fakery/deceipt.
The Internet has enabled the ability to democratically (small "d") reach huge masses of people with relatively few resources and I expect that we will see more citizen reporting as the years go on. It may in some cases also challenge the mainstream media for particular stories, but the reality is that most folks have other jobs/things that keep them busy and they do not have the resources or time to become professional journalists. When they do obtain the appropriate resources/time/credibility, they have just crossed over into the world of the professional journalist.
Technology will cause things to change and serve as a destabilizing influence for many established institutions, but I think we will always have and pay people who relate the news to us, bring us the wider world and tell stories. This will become especially more important as increasing percentages of societies become more specialized and fragment their time into narrowly defined regions of interest/study.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Failed photographers who just so happen to own a vest with lots of pockets. Not so easy now, is it? How 'bout a little respect.
A good headline like this should always be followed with a call for new legislation. We need to protect the industry. Perhaps we could ban trafficking in illicit news-related photographs, or the use of technologies that allow unrestricted sharing of such photographs on the internet.
On the other hand, the few photojournalists I know can usually take vastly better pictures of a newsworthy event with a disposable camera than I can with a phone/camera of any kind. Maybe talent will save the industry instead.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
But ... but ... who will save us from the all those raging zombies?!?!?!?!?!
I work with dozens of journalists and videojournalists (TV). While yes, some people do send in video news for us to use, most of the time it sucks. Horribly. Probably the largest use of user-contributed content to-date (with success) is CNN's iReport. However, not even all of the iReport stuff is end-user information -- much of it comes from the other newspaper and television stations that work with CNN.
Intelligent people or not, the population does demand a certain amount of traditional news. Some things can easily be covered in the future by freelancers or bloggers (like concerts and local events), but a blogger has nothing riding on being wrong. Journalists, at least, have their credibility--and whole career--on the line with big stories. If they are grossly factually incorrect, their career (at least in the big, large-pay markets) will be completely destroyed.
What does a freelancer or blogger have to lose? Nothing. A blogger "journalist" can simply get a new domain and start all over again, possibly using their old content to backdate content to make themselves look established as their new identity.
Sure, a journalist can simply change markets to escape criticism, but they can't change their name. What they say and what they do follows them forever.
While traditional mediums may be on the slow decline (Newspaper and local television), that doesn't indicate that they will become useless. Do you really trust these up-and-coming "journalists" to, say, explain to your grandmother why her voting location changed? Which "journalist" would she believe? They could all be wrong, for all she knows.
Most people will come to realize that non-professionals can hold a much stronger, and covert, bias than traditional journalists could ever hope to hold.
have powerful enough software to add their own fake smoke into the scene? That is the mark of the professional journalist :P
Monstar L
With the advent of cheap digital videos and editing systems, people just watch the shit on utube instead of watching what Mel Gibson or David Lynch or some professional with a vision might create.
If you take about 100 pictures, usually 1 of them is worthwhile. Although having someone that can get it right with 1-5 shots is better. I'm sure user submitted stuff is changing things up a bit, but someone has to sit around and edit those things. Raw photos need to go through photoshop, raw videos need to be edited, shortened and made more interesting than 15 minutes of a lighting storm.
A photojournalist will have a far better idea of what he's doing than some schmuck with a cameraphone. You can easily tell the difference between a pro shot and an amateur one, and that won't change no matter how many cameraphones there are in the world.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
Mmm...
1 billion poorly lit, poorly framed, grainy images from cameras where people believed mega pixels === quality.
How did we ever live with slightly less timely clear images that were composed well?!
Besides, it's challenging enough to get alleged photo professionals whose careers depend on it not to add smoke to Lebanese buildings. How much is your reputation as a news agency going to be worth after your fiftieth photoshopping scandal because no on has a career to put in jeopardy but their odds of selling the single shot go up massively if it's more impressive?
Sure, some of the less valid photographers will face competition and things may get a little tighter for the great ones - but there'll always be a need for reliable quality backed by a scandal proof reputation.
I don't think that journalism is the only profession that has been radically changed by the introduction of the Internet as a distribution medium. The same argument about distribution being within the reach of the unwashed masses still applies to pretty much anything that involves distributing some kind of content to an end-user. We were worried about indie artists obsoleting the Big Music Industry, amateur filmmakers taking money away from Hollywood, traditional news sources becoming obsolete, FOSS obsoleting commercial software development. And yet, none of this has happened.
To some degree, the work of amateurs has been more widely viewed and accepted due to things like blogging, YouTube, online photo galleries and more. And FOSS is a serious competitor for all kinds of business applications. In the end, however, there's a few things that keep the pros in business, and likely will continue to do so. Professional content creators (just to keep things generic) have experience, reputation and capital. Most amateurs are lacking in at least one of those areas. In the rare and brilliant case where an amateur lacks none of the above, they remain an amateur because they've chosen to commit the bulk of their time to some other profession.
Only when experience, reputation and capital have nothing to do with successfully creating unique and interesting content do I see the pro's job in danger. The Internet has enabled more amateurs by reducing the capital required to enter the market, allowing for one to gain reputation in a myriad of online communities, and experience by contributing freely and easily to the public domain. All of this free content is simply competition for the pros, who are pros (presumably) because they are one of the best. Conclusion: The Internet does enable amateur content creators to succeed, but the pros will continue to succeed by improving the quality of their work.
mandelbr0t
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
Good news photogs are still going to get the shots they've always been there for. They also get access to places and events that other people don't get access to. Being part of the press corps does give you that chance to capture Gerald Ford tripping down the stairs, or Bill Clinton ginning up some Oscar-worthy tears, etc. But to the extent that a lot people are more interested in stuff that happens to normal people, even cheesy low-res MPGs are more relevent because they exist.
The other thing, here, is the presence of more enthusiasts' cameras in and around events/scenes that would normally never rate the presence of a professional. Not the county fair, etc., but oddball sports/leagues, minor-league political events, that sort of thing. I've found that some of my own special-interest events (outdoorsy stuff among the bird dog crowd) has been bone dry of any media coverage that doesn't come from within. Um, except when the vice president accidentally peppers a lawyer while quail hunting - then all the sudden everyone wants images from that world... for exactly a week, anyway.
But when I shoot stuff at an event, there can be twenty other people there with their cell-phone-cams, and it's the nerd with the heavy duty DSLR that produces the images people actually want. Most folks simply won't carry around enough glass to produce the sort of images that a pro or an insane amateur can produce, since it's just too inconvenient. Doesn't matter how many pixels a cell phone's sensor can pack in - the laws of physics are still in the way of those tiny lenses producing really good workable images, especially of active subjects in mediocre light.
I've also found that carrying a macho camera and strobes gets you in places. It's sort of like all of those times that I used a mic cable and got around college bar cover charges saying, "I'm with the band."
But the sheer number of images produced by all of those portables (say, the stuff from the Madrid train bombings) will certainly result in lots of web/broadcast coverage that an assigned pro would never produce. But what a professional (with his/her practiced eye, journalistic sensibilities, better gear, and credentialed access) can produce will never be replaced by the ubiquitous phone-cam. These things are complimentary, not mutually exclusive. But look at how the Michael Richards video clip circulated... that stuff will certainly eclipse other material's airtime when it's compelling enough.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The best news story are not allways the newest. The best story is the one that have been there all along but which no one has covered, it is the story that requires investigation. This is true for journalism and photojournalism.
/.'ers will relate to:
The best story takes time, and editting. the best video sequence takes time and editing. It takes skill to frame the shot, to know the light, to capture a moment in ultra realism. If all the video bloggers leave journalists free, and indeed forced to focus on high quality reporting, then that can only be a good thing.
while it may be true that the prevelance of portable recording devices gives a higher probability of first images being recorded by ametuers, It doesn't change the true art of journalism.
or to put it in a way
Evey joe sixpack can make a myspace, only true designers can make sites
.... disabled that feature in the E815 I have. Or maybe it was only availabe in the "Middle East" version.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Go pick up a copy of your local newspaper. Or the USA Today. Look at the images that accompany the stories. Now see how many of them are "news as it happens" images, besides planned events like sports or political functions. Very, very few. Pictures of traumatic events, captured as they happen, make up about 1% of a professional photojournalist does. Most of it is either:
These are the things photojournalists actually do, none of which are going to be replaced by random amateurs with point and shoot cameras. So, according to the author, photojournalists are going to be put out of a job by people doing something that photojournalists don't actually do. What's next? Are vending machines going to put gourmet chefs out of business? They're everywhere, and get you fed for a lot less!
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Statistically generated photojournalism can be intriguing on a large scale. Who would have imagined, even 15 years ago, having a spontaneous tragedy, like the first plane hitting the North Tower, filmed by chance? An average joe capturing something random like the Kennedy Assassination or even Rodney King beating, back in the 60s and even 90s, was mind-blowing. Although the technology was different, between 1960 and 1991, the probability someone happened to have a camera in hand to record an event was probably about equal -- and it wasn't particularly high. Now, cameras of every sort are so ubiquitous and the processing is instantaneous, if events are NOT captured at random by someone (and not on YouTube in hours from different angles) it is somewhat surprising. You mean NO ONE had the presence of mind to film tragic/important event X and share it with us?! With 9/11, even before seeing the footage of the first plane, I assumed that someone probably caught it on video. Obviously the price to pay for this is in the currency of entropy. You get a lot of interesting stuff at random, but there is mostly crap. The theory of large number will continue to work. I'm guessing, we'll end up celebrating banality and mediocrity more frequently, but we'll also get a finite number of macabre or surreal 6 to 15 sigma events recorded too, which will ultimately drive people-based, rather than profession-based, photojournalism.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
I prefere to be an amateur and program for a living.
I can see footage from members of the public, who were in the right place at the right time, being used by the news networks more and more until they can get their own people in place but in a war zone, Boznia in the nineties for example, I can't imagine many non-professionals hanging around with their mobile phones hoping to make a quick buck.
If a similar situation arose today (even with today's technology and proliferation of mobile communication) the average resident of a war zone would not be able to travel as freely as an accredited, international journalist. Mobile phone networks are unlikely to be operational in those circumstances anyway.
I've been both a computer geek and photojournalist for over 25 years and the profession of photojournalist has been on the demise the whole time and guess what, we are still going strong. What does suck though is that the media buyer is actively looking for people they can get to do lowball work for them. But this isn't nothing news. An ad agency called me about a stock photo, but wanted to reshoot with a different twist and they were very interested when they thought I was a "dad with a camera" that they could get for $50. When I mentioned creative fee's they bolted. Ironically, they were billing their client full cost on the photography and pocketing the difference. So the lowball phenomena isn't new. At the end of the day, the top professionals will still command top dollar. The wannabe's will sell for cheap and those who don't understand the business will give away their art for "The thrill" of being published. In the end, us middle of the road shooters have to work harder to secure the good jobs.
Rob Miracle http://www.robmiracle.com
Visual Studio express free downloads from MS has not resulted in management writing their own code
Hammers & paint @ home depot has not caused massive layoffs of contractors
Everyone has a pocketknife but surgeons are still employed.
Many many crappy cameras in the wild does not mean that people will start liking crappy pictures
I like nice pictures. Blogging hasn't (yet) killed journalism/professional writing. I expect photogs will survive.
Some photographers are famous and produce pictures that form the rememberance of our times or even lead to change by altering public opinion. I can think of three pictures that went a long way to souring the public on our wars in Viet Nam and Cambodia.
t ml "The 12 or 14 negatives on that single roll of film, culminating in the moment of death for a Viet Cong, propelled Eddie Adams into lifelong fame. The photo of the execution at the hands of Vietnam's police chief, Lt. Colonel Nguyen Ngoc Loan, at noon on Feb. 1, 1968 has reached beyond the history of the Indochina War - it stands today for the brutality of our last century."
_ Ph%C3%BAc ". Associated Press photographer Nick Út earned a Pulitzer Prize for the photograph."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings "John Filo's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio, a fourteen year-old runaway, kneeling over the dead or dying body of Jeffrey Miller, shot in the mouth by an unknown Ohio National Guardsman."
http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0410/faas.h
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phan_Th%E1%BB%8B_Kim
As far as I know, these photographs were the high point of otherwise unremarkable careers. By luck, the photographer was in the right place at the right time.
On the other hand, through skill, there were photographers who always managed to be in the right place at the right time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Eisenstaedt There will always be jobs for photographers like him no matter how many cell phone cameras there are.
Within the comments on Gilmore's blog posting, many people are already pointing out that citizen journalism is not dependable. Sure, we capture some moments to terrific effect (JFK assassination), but news isn't all big events surrounded by crowds. The majority of photos published in newspapers or video footage broadcast on televised news programs are of stale topics like meetings or portraits of people involved in the news. If news agencies were to dismiss their photography staff, they'd find themselves struggling before deadline every day hoping some yokel will post a photo of the mayor speaking at the city council meeting or the police chief speaking at a press conference. News agencies have a staff that are assigned to cover these things and therefore the content can be published in a reliable and timely manner.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Part of why the pros are pros is not because they have the fancy equipment... it's also because the know how to zoom without making the viewer puke, how to get angles with good lighting, and how to move the camera without jerking the camera too much. All that goes out the window when you've got some drunk dude with a RAZR capturing a street brawl in a dark alley.
Take a look at graphic design. I think it's a pretty good parallel to what's happening in photography (my SO is a graphic designer, so I have some insight into this).
There used to be a lot of graphic designers and it used to be that a lot of them made it their bread-and-butter business to do restaurant menus, business cards, leaflets - any kind of small scale, frequently revised job like that. It wasn't glamorous, but it paid the bills between the big jobs.
Then DTP happened. And when people could start churning out the simple stuff on their own, that marked gradually dried up. The truth is, while a menu for a neighbourhood joint designed and set by the owner and cranked out on a badly trimmed Kinko's machine is clearly inferior to what a professional will do, it is good enough. The price premium a professional will charge (and has to, to stay in business) just isn't worth it, no matter how much better the results.
For a lot of graphic design like that, the cost of entry - and the baseline quality you get - for interested amateurs is compelling enough that there is no price point at which you can make a living churning out the stuff anymore. The market for "pro" work has shrunk substantially even as the total amount of work has increased. The high-end jobs are still there, naturally, but those were a pretty small proportion of the whole job market.
I suspect it is the case with stock photography and some news and feature photography as well. There's enough people doing decent enough work and selling it through cheap stock agencies - or licensing it completely for free, just for bragging rights - that the bottom will fall out of those markets as well. Just as for graphic design, the high-end stuff will still be there of course - and is arguably even more important than before - but not that many people will be able to make a living on doing it. The top, the cream of the crop, will be just fine. The journeyman base, however, will probably not be very large anymore.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Yup, exactly. Any idiot cannot take these pictures with a phone camera.
t ml
http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/lm_intro.h
Right. And alt.writing.fiction.mysteries is going to put Stephen King out of business any day now.
There's a reason why professional photojournalists get paid for what they do, and it's not just because they have cameras. The only people who are going to feel threatened by a bunch of untrained people with cameraphones are the hacks.
It's like feeling threatened as a programmer because any kid can grab a copy of emacs and gcc and write the next Oracle. Just because anyone can, doesn't mean that training and talent aren't the most important parts of the equation.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
the real danger to photojournalism is the cost pressures on news providers. The fact is that the profession has already changed markedly in the last 20 years. Digital's first effect is to make the talented (but foolish) art college grad that little bit better. For Photojournalism that has already been enough to persuade media outlets to cut experienced staff and only hire new, fresh meat. And then 3-4 years later, they go through the same cycle again.
Sure, feature photography survives, but the profession is losing the structure which allows talent to really develop. Further, there are less feature photogs than there used to be and as HD video improves, there will soon be even less.
This is, of course, progress. But it is still a bit sad and the leveling down of a communication form is worth mourning at least a little.
Oh and if this is happening in every sector, the economy is going to have to grow a lot faster to soak up all these people... to be honest I'm not sure we've begun to come to terms with that yet.
I wasn't quite sure where "legislation" came from, as I didn't RTFA...
But, Sebastiao Salgado is about all I need say.
Journalist in general are already being replaced by pretty people. Look at Sixty Minutes. Five years ago the average age of a reporter there was nearly sixty and male. Now it's under fifty and female. In the old days reporters researched and wrote their own stories. Now they read copy. Old fashion journalist will largely be extinct by the end of the decade. There are a few younger ones taking up the mantle like Anderson Cooper but even he's aging. Journalist are being traded for "Personalities". It's a very sad day for the Republic.
Maybe if we assemble these correctly we can see the image of a news scene from a fly's composite eye view... hmmmmm... nope, never mind, they still look like shit.
When I think of photojournalism, I think of the person who can not only take a picture of some news scene, but who can frame it in a way to put a human context on what has/is happening to convey more information than what is just in the picture.
Don't believe me? Go look at the Pulitzer web site and see. You can look at prize winners from 1995 to present on line. The pictures speak for themselves.
News isn't news because it happens. A lot of things happen. For example, the fact a tree falls over in the forest (I don't give a shit if you can hear it or not) is not news *unless* maybe (a purely hypothetical 'maybe' not a Reuters maybe) it was the last tree in existence that contained some microspore that will cure cancer... but the spore can only grow in living trees and now it will be lost forever... or something else that ties it to people somehow. More specifically a good photojournalist will either show how the photo ties the story to you or me, or how it makes you or me feel tied to the story. (Notice the word 'feel'.) Some dweeb taking a picture of the tree on its side with his/her cell phone is not likely to do be able to do that unless they really have some underlying talent already.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
This is like saying that the availability of the Internet is going to destroy all fine literature. Professional, high-quality work is always in demand. Consumers will just have more choice and photojournalists will have to differentiate themselves with higher quality.
Currently hooked on AMP
Ubiquitous cell phone cams does not equal the demise of the professional photojournalism.
Yes, a lot of photos are taken by people with cell phones when there is no photojournalist in site. Before cellphone cams became wide spread, those events simply wouldn't have been photographed. So cell phone cams are not exactly invading a marketspace traditionally dominated by professional photojournalists - they are invading a marketspace that has traditionally been vacant - thus I claim photojournalists are not competing with cell cam users.
Photojournalists are out there, right now, shooting the same type of events they've always shot. They'll continue to do so.
And show me a cell phone cam photo and a photo shot by a professional photojournalist from the same event, and I'll choose the photojournalist's shot 999 times out of 1000. Its not because his camera is better (some day, cell phone cams might catch up, who knows?). Its the photographer. There's a reason why these people are pro's and make their living doing it - photographic talent. Joe Schmoe with his cell phone would have to be extremily lucky to stumble into a better picture than the pro is going to take.
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
The factors involved seem to be being present when a photo opportunity happens, recognizing a photo opportunity, having a half-decent camera, and having the skill to produce a well composed photograph (instead of a blurry mess with half a thumb).
Being present is somewhat a matter of luck. However, photojournalists (like other journalists) spend more time than most people in many areas where "newsworthy" (IE: "I can turn that into a story!") events are more frequent. This improves their chances.
Recognizing a photo opportunity is a learned skill. Unsubtle ones like the collapse of the World Trade Center can be recognized by any moron with a pulse and an IQ higher than room temperature. However, such moments may be hard to pick out of the crowd of moments around us, as the current Wikipedia example image for Eisenstaedt suggests. The kiss is one amoung millions, probably even millions that day; but capturing it has elevated it. Would you have stopped and taken the shot, or merely smiled kindly at the happy couple and wandered on past? (I don't think "Get a room!" was a current expression at the time; anyone know?)
The ubiquity of cameras has reduced the importance of merely having a camera on the scene. However, all cameras are not created equal. No matter how lucky you are, you won't get the same quality shots with a keychain toy as with a fully kitted Hasselblad. Professionals put serious money into having the best gear, since they can get a return on the investment (and often a tax write-off). The barrier isn't absolute, since the availability of quality and affordable digital camera gear has gone up over the last couple years; there's a lot of "prosumer" grade cameras about. However, the ubiquitous cell phone camera is a lot closer to my first example for quality.
The last element is skill. With the cost of "developing" digital shots so low, it's a lot cheaper to develop the skill of photo composition than it used to be. However, since developing such skill also takes effort, most people still use a RFC 2795-styled approach, taking shots and picking the best afterwards. While a professional does this too, the expert knowlege they possess means they have a higher starting point, and an easier time finding that one utterly outstanding shot.
As Heinlein observed in Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, "There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe." I wouldn't be too shocked if an "amateur" ended up with a Pulitzer within the next 20 years, but I don't expect the professional photojournalists to die out any time soon.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Hang on, doesn't that mean that due to my local hardware store being so handy and being able to order things cheaply, plumbers, carpenters, builders etc. are all out of a job?
Cheap cameras of decent quality don't magically turn your average schmoe who doesn't want to know anything beyond how to turn it to manual and go click into a pro photo journalist.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
What a profound and meaningless argument. Amateur photojournalists have been around for decades producing low-grade photos and video (dictated by what's available in the consumer market) that the media deems relevant only because those photos or video were the only ones available for that particular news story. As for the authenticity issue, there are and continue to be ethical issues surrounding all of photojournalism, professional or amateur. There will be no substitute for at least sports, political, or locally planned event photojournalists to name a few, so it is hard to believe that the professional photojournalist will be on the demise. If a news event takes place and the media wants to follow up on the aftermath of the story, who would you send to take pictures? Joe Schmoe? Will the media wait for Mr. Joe Schmoe-the-photojournalist to produce a news event picture, or will they just send someone on their staff - this implies that the person is a professional photojournalist - to get the picture and the job done on time? While there are still news organizations and corporations in existence, there will always be professional photojournalists in need.
So, let's give million monkeys million cameras and wait when they produce something like this.
When LIFE magazine ceased weekly publication, that was the end of photojournalism as a career.
The web caters to people that think "everyman should be able to do this", even when they can't. So, "citizen journalists" will eventually overwhelm paid profressionals just because people have no way to determine the difference.
It all comes down to what are people looking for. Quality? Or just quantity. Or just a low price? A newspaper or web news site can "afford" far more when publishing freely contributed content vs. professional content they have to pay for. So, we're more likely to see free stuff. Not only that, but the difference between professional and amateur may not mean much for tiny, cropped down images on a web site.
The other thing the web can't stand is the idea that material isn't being published because it isn't "appropriate". Would a newspaper or TV news program show a picture of a person "believed to be a rapist?" However, if someone has a cell phone camera picture of someone leaving the scene of a rape, you can bet some web site will put it up with the caption "He did it!!!!" What does this do to the idea of a fair trial?
The idea of the "citizen journalist" pushes this over to a distributed model. Authority is a difficult problem in distributed systems and the "democratic" nature of the web seems to abhore the idea of any authority at all. This makes it very difficult to tell if you are looking at a clever fake or the truth. Sure, you might get different web sites with different material. OK, what is truth? Majority wins? Or is there something else that we can judge this stuff by? Right now, I would say it is unlikely there will be a standard and people will be left on their own. Truth could be a very slippery concept.
The role of professional photographers will be greatly deminished by orders of magnitude if their careers are limited to going to places where they can be killed because no one else will risk it. On every OTHER part of the planet the amatuers will rule.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
It's been hard to respect you guys since the ones who looked like Animal or Dennis Hopper in "Apocalypse Now" got replaced by Blond/Blonde talking heads with blow-dry hair and perfect teeth.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
No, I'm pretty sure the entire journalism crowd's up a tree; the doctored photos of Reutter's photojournalist, sure, but what about NBC making up the story about 6 imams being set on fire the other day? To them, it's all about installing a Democratic administration.
And that's a good thing; the Democratic head of the oversight committee, Rais (spelling unsure) can't tell Shiite from Sunni. Shouldn't it be about ability, not "it's his turn?" It just seems like the blind leading the blind, when we need capable people the most.
Well, at least the journalists will be happy.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Maybe I'm missing something that someone could point out?
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Here's my analysis of Adnan Hajj's disastrous image,
This Image Is Not Faked
(The page is written for a general audience, which is why I explain powers-of-two and other computery things.)
It is a bad image which should never have been printed, but the mistake was purely technical and is the same level of mistake as using too much red-eye correction or bad white points, or out-of-focus even.
The mistake was much more on Reuters's photo editor deciding to print such a messed-up picture, than their stringer who through haste submitted it. It's the editor's job to decide what, *if anything*, to print to accompany a story. It's the photographer's job to provide a lot of options for the editor. In the olden days, proof sheets full of options.
I know all the real editors are dead. A shame. Journalism used to be almost respectable!
(I did the photography/journalism stuff for six years in school, never at a professional level. I've done digital audio synthesis since the late 70s, and DSP professionally a few times since the mid-80s, including coding testing and releasing dust removal software. Thus the disastrous image immediately struck me as familiar, similar to testing situations.)
Here Here! Yes without swift legislative action we could see the end of reporting on issues such as the Janine massacre in which 750 million Palestinians were murdered as reported on CNN or GW Bush not being a good soldier while in the military. Or the recent story out of Baghdad in which hundreds were burned alive. We could even end up with stories telling lies like 850,000 hacked to death in Rwanda due to UN inaction or John Kerry not an American hero. This legislation must go through to protect the dinosaur media from becoming extinct!
There have been billions of people capable of writing for many years, yet professional writing seems bigger than ever, with political leaders making vast sums of money just by penning a book. The problem isn't whether everyone can do it, it's who can do it well. No matter how good the equipment is, only a small percentage of users generate the best quality, and the institutionalizing species we are, we'll only want to see the product of the top percentage no matter how good everyone else is.