Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Demise of the Professional Photojournalist

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the going-going dept.

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.

4 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Big whoop by Fear+the+Clam · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

  2. No more photojournalists?!?!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    But ... but ... who will save us from the all those raging zombies?!?!?!?!?!

  3. Will the cell phone bloggers by antifoidulus · · Score: 3, Funny

    have powerful enough software to add their own fake smoke into the scene? That is the mark of the professional journalist :P

    --
    Monstar L
  4. Re:Eh, not so soon by EvanED · · Score: 2, Funny

    On another note, it's a darn good thing we didn't send him into Iraq to look for WMDs,... or did we, and that's the real reason we didn't find anything there?

    He was over there embedded with some US troops.

    Then he aired a description of their troop movements as part of his news broadcast (including a map drawn in the sand), and the Army essentially booted him.