I agree. When you see the world downsizing all around you, you might want to make yourself stand out by being versatile and multi-skilled, rather than by being one-dimensional and obstructionist. And why withhold your own byline? It’s never a good career move to become invisible.

Thanksfully someone said it! I was feeling pretty wired reading the discussion going on about this topic over at sportsshooter.com. Reminds me on times when I just started in journalism. Back then (20 years ago) the people working at this big typesetters tried to prevent reporters from typing their own stories directly into computers instead of typewriters. Yeah right. We all know that happened to them… I’d love to work with a reporter, a photographer, a sound guy, a director, a producer and who ever else will add to the story. But if shrinking budgets don’t allow for it, your skills and your creativity is all you have. Calling in the union won’t help you. At least not in the long run.

Saying that “Resistence seems to be the knee-jerk reaction for some people in this business.” is a huge oversimplification of what’s currently going on at the newspapers.

I consider myself a ‘multimedia shooter’ capable of producing videos, stills and writing stories. In the same time, I work for a paper where reporters were handed point and shoot cameras and my experience so far has been parallel to that of Heather Hughes whose SS post I quote below.

“I work at a sister paper for the Balimore Sun, and our reporters got the cameras and video cameras last year, and all it has done is hurt the quality and look of our paper. Assignments are worse because the reporters don’t take the time to make it work for a photographer, and we get to spend time editing their crappy work to make it publishable.

And yes, we still drive 45 min. for a building mug so that didn’t stop either. And yes, you can easily screw up a mug shot (most of them are out of focus, have trees growing out of their heads, under or over exposed, etc.) Even with their extensive 2hr long training class with our photo editor.

This is the second newspaper I have worked at that has made this move of handing cameras to reporters. It is never good, doesn’t stop at the “fluff” assignments and only serves to encourage people to undervalue their photo staffs and the power of photographs in general.

Yes, reporters can not tell the difference between a good assignment (to ask for a photographer) and a bad one, they just take the easiest path at the time. We run more glorified headshots, shot by the photo staff, than ever before because there is no incentive to work with us to come up with something better. They don’t think visually, and now they don’t talk to the visual people, so now the paper sucks visually.

We have reporter photos and reader photos as CENTERPIECE on our front pages, and I’m not talking about spot news here. We are a 100,000 circ. daily so this is not just a problem for weeklies.

“Training” is not only a joke (who doesn’t know how to use a digital camera point & shoot) but degrades what we do. So anyone with a couple hours of instruction can be as good as Carol Guzy? So the years many of us have spent at college, or working, perfecting our ability to capture the moment and compose has no value?

Yes, there are never enough photographers to cover everything. But should we cover everything? Do we write a story about everything or do we filter out things that aren’t newsworthy?

Sure, we can all write a story but will it engage readers? We have our skills and they have theirs.

Yes, the internet means people want to see more. But they are seeing more so don’t you think the average reader now has an above average visual eye? While readers can’t explain why, they know when they see great photography and mediocre. We are losing subscribers, and our audience, because people look at the newspaper to give them something they can’t do themselves. Show them things, tell them stories, not just what someone looks like.

And have we all forgotten about ethics? Very few reporters understand when you can and cannot set up a photo, or manipulate the situation. How can you trust what they bring back? How do you teach all of that in an hour?

All of this disrespect for our profession and skills makes me sick. How quickly we have forgotten how powerful professional photographers photos were from 9/11, Vietnam, and Virginia Tech. Others were there, but we got the photos because we know how to and have the skills. If this trend continues I fear the next big event we won’t be there, and then the story won’t be told. “

Rich,

No offense taken. I totally agree with the points you are making about the end of the one trick pony. It takes some extra effort and courage to get out of your safety zone and learn new tricks but the results are totally worth it. The ability to expend our (photogs and writers) story telling capabilities by using a variety of tools are absolutely fascinating and exciting. The freedom of posting work not just on the newspaper’s websites but on other websites for the world so see are wonderful. The control we can have over the multimedia projects’ design online are truly encouraging. I am not threatened by reporters picking up cameras. We are all learning how to shoot videos, how to construct narratives that can grasp a viewer. Journalism will survive because there is a need for information and entertainment.

Besides, hope and optimism are much better than ignoring the reality, sticking your head in sand and waiting for someone to kick you in the ass.

The points I was trying to make are that:
The reality of the transition period in a medium size paper owned by a large corporation interested exclusively in the bottom line can be discouraging. It actually has more to do with the profit oriented, shareholders owned character of the newspaper business than with the transition to multimedia. Again, I’m extremely excited about the multimedia approach. What bothers me is the business nature of newspapers. I think that a non-profit system would work better and provide higher quality of independent journalism while still paying our salaries.

The way the system is set up currently in most smaller newspapers, there is little interest in quality journalism (visual or otherwise) because quality costs money and time and (according to people in charge) does not provide instant gratification. Don’t take me wrong, I think there is room for parents’ submitted photos of little league games online but such galleries should not get nearly as good of a play online as stories produced by professional journalists. Also, I would rather see fewer stories covered but see them covered in an in-depth way with sufficient number of sources and broad background information.

I personally believe that the quality and credibility of information and stories we produce are the only things that will draw viewers to the newspapers’ websites. This is our potential strength and while we should work hard in taking advantage of blogs, interactivity etc. We should never lose quality and credibility out of sight the way it’s happening now in some newspapers.