• Banjo extraordinaire Danny Barnes (I don’t know his music) has a great essay on “How to Make a Living Playing Music,” and he might as well be writing about making a living taking pictures. He starts “if you are a very materialistic person, skip this article, i don’t think you are going to like what it says.” The article is partly philosophical–don’t gossip, avoid people who talk about gear, “all the trouble in the world is going to come for you in two ways. the things you say, and the things you agree to do. be very careful about these items.”–but mostly practical–”the main business strategy is to build your own audience,” “don’t be afraid to do other things to make money in the short term,” and
  

  “be totally square on your taxes. render unto caesar that which is caesar’s. if you try to fudge on this, it will come back to bite you every time. get receipts for everything, 1099 everyone no matter what, unless they are a corporation.”

  The whole thing’s a fascinating insight into what allows a successful musician to keep doing what he loves, and has many parallels to photographers working on a career.

• Kenneth Jarecke’s “2009 – Year of Transition” has a great analysis of what 2009 meant to many freelancers. He explains why he turned down editorial work (a first for Jarecke), talks about new strategies for distribution, cogently analyzes the havoc caused by editorial layoffs and how it will affect the future, and the stupidity of photographers signing “work for hire” contracts for $1200 a day with big clients.
• PDN talks with the Aftermath Project jurors to find out “What It Takes To Win An Aftermath Project Grant“
• Joerg Colberg’s excellent “We’re all Zapruders now (but that doesn’t make us journalists)” examines what it means when everyone has a camera and how that’s different from journalism.
  

  “I don’t ever recall hearing or seeing anyone describe Abraham Zapruder as a “citizen journalist”. He was seen as what we was: A chance bystander who happened to have a camera (and use it) the moment the American president was shot and killed.”

  The piece ends with strong argument for what society stands to lose by getting rid of professional journalists.

• Magtastic Blogsplosion surveys many perspectives on upcoming tablet devices and what they may mean for magazines in “The revolution to come.”
  

  “The industry also wants to avoid the newspaper dilemma – publishers were so excited to give away their content for free in the early days of the web, that there was no thought to an industry business model – and the toothpaste is proving difficult to push back into the tube.”

  And check out Magtastic’s collection of groups using the newspaper format in innovative ways in “What Newspapers Did Next” and “What Newspapers Did Next (2).”

• The New York Times covers big media companies’ likely plan to begin charging for online content in “Adding Fees and Fences on Media Sites.” Among the problems faced by the old guard,
  

  “It is the established media, with their legacy of high operating costs and outdated technology, that face this problem. Leaner, newer online competitors will continue to be free, avidly picking up the users lost by sites that begin to charge.”

• PDNPulse talks with the Wall Street Journal photo department and examines how the newspaper’s attitude toward visual journalism has changed under Murdoch. PDN reports: “The good news for photography is that our editor, Robert Thomson, is a very visual person,” says Jack Van Antwerp, the paper’s photography director. And while you’re at it, check out the Wall Street Journal’s 2009 Year in Photos, which includes many friends.

 

‘Show of hands, how many of you have bought a newspaper in the last week?’ Usually no one raises their hand.” -Greg Ceo

 

Greg Ceo likes to survey his students in his Business Practices for Photography class at Savannah College of Art and Design. Usually, in his classes, a couple of students have purchased a newspaper in the last month, and none are subscribers. Great post on his blog about reactions to the survey. (via APhotoEditor)

US newspaper circulation has hit a 70 year low. Here’s a graphic illustration of the past 20 years of major US newspapers’ circulation sizes. The aging “creative class”, who once staffed newsrooms, production departments, and studios, is finding that there’s no work to be had.

Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor seems to have found success after switching to a majority-online publication, seeing an increase in paid subscribers.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to like reading online any time soon…

After a recent entry in the neverending debate on the death of journalism and how to save newspapers, Metafilter user fightorflight took a page from an old antispam email forward (which in turn might well be based off of sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein’s solution to fan mail) and developed this standard response letter. A shortened version:

Check as many as apply:

Your [idea] advocates a

	( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) crowd-sourced

approach to saving journalism. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won’t work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws owing to the avaraciousness of modern publishers.)

	( ) It does not provide an income stream to the working
	    journalist
	( ) Nobody will spend eight hours sitting in a dull council
	    meeting to do it
	( ) Users of the web will not put up with it
	( ) Print readers will not put up with it
	( ) Good journalists will not put up with it

[...]

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

	( ) The existence and popularity of the BBC
	( ) The massive tedium of investigative journalism
	( ) Editorial departments small enough to be profitable are too
	    small to do real reporting
	( ) Reluctance of governments and corporations to be held to
	    account by two guys with a blog
	( ) The tiny amounts of money to be made from online ads for
	    small sites

[...]

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

	( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none
	    have ever been shown practical
	( ) Society depends on journalists producing news that few
	    readers are actually all that interested in, quite
	    honestly
	( ) Having a free online "printing press" doesn't turn you
	    into a journalist any more than your laser printer did
	( ) Citizen journalists are almost as good as citizen dentists
	( ) You are Jeff Jarvis

[...]

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

	( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
	( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person
	    for suggesting it.
	( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and
	    burn your house down!

- posted by fightorflight on Metafilter

Read on »

Reports of the death of newspapers have been greatly exaggerated. Tomorrow’s fishwrap retains its role as today’s outlet for the stories unheard elsewhere. And while the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News won’t be producing any more projects such as “Final Salute,” other newspapers continue to produce in-depth, long-term journalism with significant visual components. This is remarkable, given how much budgets, staff sizes, and news holes, have shrunk in recent years. Two great examples have recently been published.

The Dallas Morning News’ exceptional “Choosing Thomas,” chronicles the story of T.K. and Deidrea Laux’s choice to bring their son into the world knowing he would die soon after birth. The piece will leave you in tears. Journalism this intimate and powerful is a rare thing, indeed. Be sure to check out the webchat with the Lauxes and Deidrea’s diary, both of which exemplify the possibilities of the web’s wide-open canvas.

The Denver Post’s “Ian Fisher: American Soldier” is breathtaking simply for its breadth. Capturing the life of one soldier from signing recruitment papers to boot camp to deployment in Iraq to the homecoming, the piece offers a whole picture of the American military with both depth and intimacy. In one sense, there’s almost too much to look through. I’ve only skimmed the photos…my internet connection makes futile any attempts at more intensive browsing. But the dedication to the story is obvious. This is what long-term visual journalism will look like in the coming years, and it’s great to see it’s already being produced.

And just because I don’t have a better time to bring it up, the St. Petersburg Times’ investigative look into the Church of Scientology deserves a look. Published earlier this summer, the articles offer an unprecedented look into the supreme weirdness inside the highest echelons of Scientology. Knowing how quick to litigate the Church of Scientology can be, this a bold move for a newspaper in uncertain economic times.

(and an aside: I wish wish wish all newspapers and magazines would use some standard method for displaying videos on their websites. Vimeo would be a great option, youtube would be an improvement over the mishmash currently used by newsrooms around the world. Brightcove is buggy for me even on the best of connections, and anything that doesn’t let me pause and load the whole movie and then watch makes me close the window. Grumble, grumble, grumble.)

Silicon Alley Insider gathers data on some newspapers who have recently ceased their print publications and moved entirely online.  While some, notably the Kentucky Post and the Seattle PI, have seen sharp increases in online viewership, the picture isn’t as rosy for most online-only newspapers.  A few of the newspapers now boast monthly online readership about the size of our own here at dvafoto, which is both a bad sign for those newspapers and a nice sign for us.  Most interesting, though, is an almost throw-away comment about the Kentucky Post:

A study by Princeton economists says that since the Posts closed, both the number of candidates for city council and local board posts, and the number of people who showed up to vote has dropped. The study also says that the incumbent politicians and board members now have higher chances of staying in office.”

In short, the printed newspaper is an important check on politicians. Not new news, I suppose, but now there’s data to back up the assertion.

[I held off on posting this, thinking we wouldn't be adding much to the discussion...but after a week or so, there still hasn't been much mention of organizations working to change the demographics of the photography industry]

There are a lot of white faces at all levels in the photography industry: in the editorial offices, in the business offices, behind the cameras, and in front of the cameras (well, in photojournalism it’s often dark suffering faces in front of the cameras, but that’s another conversation; rarely do black models feature prominently in fashion magazines, for instance.). What started as an observation at Reciprocity Failure turned into an incendiary accusation and “contest” at Duckrabbit and then blossomed into a conversation in the photography blog echo chamber. Prison Photography, Politics, Theory & Photography, APhotoADay, Conscientious, Photo Business News & Forum, and APhotoEditor all weighed in, and I’m sure there were others. Duckrabbit’s now added more fire to the flame…. Some of the best discussion I’ve seen on the topic occurred on lightstalkers and in APhotoEditor’s comments (though APE’s discussion got a little out of hand and comments have since been closed). I was also interested to read John Edwin Mason’s perspective about the lack of diversity at the just-finished Look3 festival in Charlottesville. This is a conversation that needs to happen. Photo District News started out as the target of the accusations of passive racism, and they have responded in the PDNPulse post “On Lack of Diversity in Photography, and in PDN.”

As some have pointed out, this is a problem far more pervasive than the jury for PDN’s Photo Annual. Looking at the jury for this year’s POYi, for instance, or the names of the BOP judges, the contests are controlled, primarily by white people (update June 23: thanks to a reader for pointing out that BOP counts a few African-Americans and latinos among their judges). World Press Photo, on the other hand, boasts a remarkably diverse roster of jurors. Here, I should say that I do not mean to impugn any of these talented judges or these contests; the work they reward is often well-deserving and the lack of the diversity, I think, indicates not a pernicious white supremacist power grab, but rather a passive exclusion of people of color endemic to the European and American mass media industry. That’s still a significant hurdle, but perhaps it’s better than it could be. Also, there’s a raft of black media organizations (old list, found in a suspect comment in APhotoEditor’s discussion), and I don’t want to disparage their efforts by suggesting the western media is only white. That list, too, suggests that the majority-white media world does not fill the market need for black Americans, and one suspects it doesn’t for other minorities in the US, either. That isn’t necessarily a problem either; media perhaps shouldn’t be all things to all people, and a multiplicity of publications aimed at varied audiences begets a broader and better perspective on the world than would a few magazines aimed at “the masses.”

The simple fact is that there needs to be more diversity throughout the photo industry at all levels. Programs such as the Angkor Photography Festival’s free workshops for young Asian photographers, the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop (interview about the workshop), Aina (a nonprofit geared toward creating a well-trained independent local media in Afghanistan; interview about the workshop), the Gordon Parks Center for Culture and Diversity (their photo contest deadline is today, by the way), the Young Photographer in the Caucusus Award (deadline June 15), and minority journalism programs and professional organizations (yes, they do matter!), begin to address the need for an entry point to photography to those from different backgrounds than the middle class white males dominating the industry. Programs such as Women in Photojournalism or the Photobetty collective (sadly, now seemingly defunct) begin to address gender disparity in photography. Organizations such as Majority World exhibitions such as ICP’s Snap Judgments, and blogs such as Asian Photography Blog, begin to show the world as viewed and photographed by its many cultures. And grant competitions such as National Geographic’s All Roads Photography Program begin the process of rewarding high-caliber photography by indigenous photographers. But this is only a beginning.

As expected, Americans Laura Ling and Euna Lee were put on trial in North Korea and the pair have just been sentenced to 12 years “reform through labor” in a prison camp, according to the Korean Central News Agency. The pair were reporting on the China-North Korea border for CurrentTV when they were arrested and jailed. The Obama administration has said they are trying “all possible channels” to resolve the matter and secure the women’s release, but North Korea has become increasingly hostile to negotiations over the past weeks and months. Ling and Lee have become pawns in high stakes political negotiations, and it may cost them their lives. The prison camps in North Korea have an alarmingly high death rate, according to reports.

From Bagnews comes word and visual evidence of the much talked about Newsweek redesign. The website has also been redesigned, and multimedia and photos seem to play a larger role (now with a separate section like at Time’s website!) The Guardian has some of the nitty-gritty, including this little nugget:

…the ex-staffer adds that senior managers have created a newsroom culture where “there is a total disdain and contempt for the kind of on-the-ground reporting that people like us, who grew up in the Newsweek tradition, [carry out]“. He claims that journalists based overseas were told that newsgathering could be conducted over the phone. The emphasis has shifted to comment and analysis, with more columnists and longer articles.”

Sounds like an opinion fueled by bad blood and the staffer in question hasn’t been in the newsroom for a few years…. The new design looks great to me, from what little I’ve seen. The website is much more readable than it was before, and the magazine is said to have an increased emphasis on photography.

As the news industry continues to tank, dwindling fees have caused many to wonder when journalism (and photography) will become a pay-to-play game. Huffington Post has put another nail in the coffin of the notion of a paying career in journalism. Now, instead of just contributing to the site for free (where does that $20+ million in seed money go?), would-be Huffington Post writers can pay for the chance to be an intern at the site. The current bid is $13,000 for “two-three month[s]” interning for Huffington Post. The money raised in the auction will go to the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, and there are 125 other “celebrity experiences” up for grabs in the auction.

(via bloggasm)

While I’ve known about Paper Cuts for a long time, Out of Print, a map documenting closed American newspapers (or those who’ve just stopped publishing a print edition), is new to me. The format is the same, Erica Smith plots the locations and date of closures on a Google Map of the US. Those black push-pins are not a welcome site.