But somewhere I want a discussion of how we do what we do, in the real world of an increasingly fractured marketplace where traditional companies have fewer resources and new outlets have limited resources.

The link to SionPhoto Weblog’s rant was interesting, but seemed to ignore the realities. There may be a global interest in photojournalism, but who pays for it?

Look at Gannett, the 800 pound gorilla in newspapers. Their focus, the ‘information center’, seems to be about creating lots of content from whatever source is available. Not about creating high quality content from trained and experienced journalists. Look at some Gannett sites and you’ll see huge numbers of galleries/audio slideshows/videos – but there is a real relationship between quality and quantity.

My fear has been and continues to be that it doesn’t matter if they are right. Scenario one – they are right, and quality doesn’t matter. Their model succeeds and thoughtful, compelling work is pushed to the fringes. (I know it will never disappear, someone will always find a way to do some good work.)
Scenario two – they are wrong and quality does matter. Their model fails and newspaper circulation dwindles; with fewer resources there is less quality work produced.

But in the end, it doesn’t matter so much what I think – I’m not driving the bus.

I’d love to find a way to bring in the voices of the people in charge – create a conversation with publishers, or top editors at newspapers, as well as those running new outlets. Those are the people whose opinions really matter, in terms of the larger view.

I don’t at all mean to say the other discussions aren’t important – they absolutely are. I’m all for finding ways of improving the craft and and storytelling. I wish there were more hours in the day for all of it.

But I’d love to also find a way to at least have a better understanding of the wider view.

a long rant, my apologies.

-joe