Dave Wyatt to show at the Photographer's Gallery

Continuing the success of last year a Photo MA graduate, Dave Wyatt, has been chosen for the Photographer's Gallery Fresh Faced and Wild Eyed exhibition that showcases the best graduate work from the previous year. Wyatt's Thames Town Project also features in Issue 2 of Deep Sleep magazine ....more

MOVE TO TWITTER

As of Monday 18th May I will be moving the industry news section of the blog (Awards/grants Equipment Events Gallery/slideshow General Issues Photo MA News Photojournalism work) to my twitter feed. Most of the stories I have been posting are simply links to existing stories on the web, and I can provide these links much more efficiently using twitter. The MA News will continue to be blogged at this site, as well as through the twitter feed.

To follow me on Twitter - go to www.twitter.com, click on find people and type "djclark". If you have a twitter account (its free and I recommend you do this) you can "follow" me. There are numerous pieces of free software to help you integrate the twitter feed with your web browser and phone.

Climate Change A Hard Subject to Photograph?

"It's hard to believe that for a subject as trendy as climate change, there are so few photographers who specialize in it. As Wolfe explained, it's a topic that defies journalism's typical demands of daily deadlines and breaking news. "It's a very hard story to cover," he said, "because it's so huge and so slow, and it's one that doesn't really fit the way we gather news. ... That, and none of us make any money."" ...more

Time Relaunches

Getty Images and Time Inc. are throwing the switch on LIFE.com, a new site that aims to dazzle visitors with the vast digital photo archives of both companies.

The site, targeted at consumers, is launching March 31 with 7 million professional images presented in eye-catching galleries. In development for about six months, the site is launching at a risky time for media ventures; growth in online advertising has slowed to a crawl. ...more

Alamy Discover Newspapers have no budget for pictures

"We have seen some dramatic declines with some of our newspaper customers this quarter,
ranging from 30% to 70% down year on year. I would like to share some thoughts with you
on how we can reverse this trend.

I have spent the past week visiting photo editors and managing editors at several of the
major UK titles to get a better understanding of why this is happening and where they see
their businesses going.

All of the people I met with made the following observations:

- Advertising revenues have fallen dramatically this quarter in most cases
- Print sales have been falling and will continue to do so
- Online versions of newspapers have yet to deliver a revenue stream comparable with that of print
- Most titles have been making redundancies in recent months
- Editorial budgets have been cut
- Further editorial cuts are anticipated

Newspapers are going through a painful transition period that is being exacerbated by the recession. Most of the main titles think they will survive, but it is not yet clear what the right commercial structure for them will be. The only thing that is certain is that difficult choices and further cost reductions lie ahead of them.

Alamy is the only large supplier of imagery not offering a subscription scheme to newspapers and we are being squeezed out of this market by offerings from our largest competitors.
These deals are in addition to, and separate from, newswire subscriptions. In the past we have
managed to keep away from these deals because we represent a lot of material that isn't available
anywhere else. Unfortunately the recession is forcing a change in behaviour at the picture desks
that leaves little opportunity for image providers who don't offer unlimited downloads for a fixed fee. To put this in context, our largest UK newspaper customer has ordered their picture desk to only download images from agencies they have subscription deals with."
James West Alamy CEO

US Newspaper Industry Staggers

"If you don't have people out working as full-time reporters, there's this category of information that's not going to appear magically out of nowhere," said Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia University's School of Journalism, who argues that papers made a mistake by giving away their wares online. "In a world where all content is free, original newsgathering doesn't happen. We really need to face up to the fact that this is going to be lost."...more

Simon Norfolk Talks about the future

So my predictions for the future? More "name" photographers will be cashing in their reputations to teach "masterclasses" to wealthy orthodontists.

So-called "principled" photographers will be cozying up to Russian oligarchs and third-world billionaires. None of us will be saying "no" to wedding photography or lucrative teaching posts which sell to young students the rarely-realized dream that they’ll one day have jobs as photographers.

My advice? Get re-skilled. Keep your photographic aspirations but try to get a trade like film editing, web-design or accounting.

Soon we’ll all be amateur photographers with real money-making jobs on the side that we don’t tell our colleagues about. We need to get over the snobbery attached to that.

And we have to be tougher in our demands. Magazines online will be built by re-skilled photography lovers around business plans that don’t include paying wages to the photographers they ask to write.

They pay salaries to each other, they pay the man who comes to fix the photocopier, but the "name" photographers they ask to contribute six hundred words get nothing. With business models like that, how can we survive?" ...more

World Press Photo Winner Struggling To Find Work

Last spring Anthony Suau pleaded with Time magazine – where he's been a contract photographer for 20 years – to publish his photo essay on the economic crisis in Cleveland, Ohio.

"When I arrived there I was in shock," Suau recalls. "There was almost not a single street in Cleveland that didn't have a house that was boarded up because of a foreclosure." He compared the scene to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Time decided not to print the story, and Suau's pictures ran only on Time.com, where it drew little attention in the U.S. – until today, when one of Suau's Cleveland pictures won the World Press Photo of the Year award....more

For Subscribers Only: Locking Up the News Sites

Out of all the imperfect scenarios available, the least imperfect version looks to me like this: A bunch of news organizations get together, create a site walled off from the prying Web-crawlers of Google (and the momentary affections of the casual Web surfer), charge subscription fees, and split these fees and any ad revenue....more

Spot Us

A new website allows journalists to pitch stories they want to do and then asks the community to donate to giving you the resources to make the story.

See and example below,


Chris Cook's Pitch on Spot.Us from spotus on Vimeo.

Sign up and make your pitch ...more

How Low Will Newspapers' Ad Revenues Go?

When Arthur Sulzberger Jr. refused to talk to his own reporter about the financial condition of the New York Times Co., it was the latest sign of an industry in deep trouble.

After all, the Times is not only the nation's top-selling metropolitan daily but also boasts the top newspaper Web site, averaging 19.5 million unique visitors each month. Its struggles have sparked a passionate debate about how to wring more cash from the online world where the Times, like most newspapers, gives away its wares for free....more

The death of the news

If reporting vanishes, the world will get darker and uglier. Subsidizing newspapers may be the only answer. ...more

1981 TV Report on the Birth of Internet News

Newpapers may seek charity funding

"Could newspapers and local broadcasters begin seeking philanthropic support from the civic foundations and private donors that are starting to bankroll news non-profits? It appears entirely likely. With for-profit media watching their news-gathering resources dwindle, some editors say they're open to the idea of seeking help from donors." ...more

Burn Magazine

Photo Ma graduate Pete Carney has recommended Burn Magazine as a good source of information. They also have a large fund for emerging photographers. The site is curated by David Alan Harvey. .

....more

Red Camera Stills in NYT

"Images of kids playing video games were created by Robbie Cooper, a British photographer who employed a Red camera — a very-high-resolution video camera — and then took stills from the footage. Cooper, who says he was inspired by the camera technique that Errol Morris used to interview people in his documentaries, arranged his equipment so that the players were actually looking at a reflection of the game on a small pane of glass. He placed the camera behind the reflection so that it could look directly into their faces as they played. Cooper and his collaborators, Andrew Wiggins and Charly Smith, videotaped children in England and in New York."...more

Obama Travelogue

Scout Tufankjian documents Obama's campaign ...more

Digital Railroad Close to Collapse

Digital Railroad is laying off staff and scrambling for investment in a bid to stave off liquidity ...more

Photojournalism that moves

Photo MA Dalian course leader speaks to The Philippine Inquirer about the future of photojournalism. ...more

I Don't Think Print Is Dead or Even Dying

Runner's World editor-in-chief and current American Society of Magazine Editors president David Willey offered a positive view of the future in his address to the American Magazine Conference Tuesday morning. "I don't think print is dead or even dying," the editor said ...more