[Lightstalkers] Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 09:57:51 +0000

Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism, and “Slow News” So as not to divert Mike Fox’s worthy thread on business models from its intended course, I am posting this bit of related argumentation on a separate thread. Our journalistic endeavors tend to be dominated by the need to get the material published – that is, we want to get our story out there so that people know that something is wrong (or sometimes right) with the world – and we have historically been limited by the inherent strictures of the established media (considerations of space, editorial agendas as to what stories ought to run and how they should appear stylistically, etc). We can all cite famous examples of good material not getting published or getting published only in a severely truncated form. Marcus Bleasdale’s superb Congo material is a recent example of the hurdles we must jump, since he had such a hard time publishing it although it won some distinguished awards before the fact and partly because of those awards eventually appeared as it ought to have in the pages of several different magazines. Along comes the web and suddenly we are presented with possibilities for self-publishing that go far beyond the traditional vanity press. And given that POY has recognized web publishing as a legitimate genre worthy of prizes means that self-publishing on the web can escape the stigma of the vanity press as well. But we are faced with significant problems still. Those of us who work independently – and the web facilitates our independence in many ways – are confronted by problems such as how to assert our presence on the web, how to draw in readers, how to conduct business and ensure that we make enough money to keep working, how to deliver content in an efficient, speedy and sufficiently comprehensive manner, and so on. And in the end, because we are still in the process of a transition that may take years before these new forms of publication, distribution and narrative structure finally gel, we settle for half-assed measures – we end up publishing rudimentary slideshows on rather timid and tepid websites run by the established media, and we receive ridiculously little compensation in return. The amount of work required to put together a good multimedia piece is in no way compensated by editorial rates still based on (1) criteria related to print media, and (2) cost cutbacks stemming from the past and related to past ways of doing business. So how do we bypass the established media and go directly to the consumer? One question asked by Mike Fox on his thread is whether or not the web can support our endeavors; that is, will viewers be willing, for example, to pay us directly for our content, perhaps downloading a story, either in pdf format or multimedia, onto their iPhone and viewing it there. As Mike points out, browsing the web is a different procedure from browsing a magazine or newspaper, so viewers of the future can be expected to be more selective, more likely to target specific themes (using a search engine to “alert” them as to new relevant material), and unlikely to review more than a few initial entries on any particular subject list after the search engine does the initial browsing and gathering, so that we have to ensure that our work shows up near the head of such lists. Clearly, this new form of “reading,” these new forms of consumption, present significant challenges to us, and perhaps some opportunities too. There are two issues confronting us, then. How do we get paid? And how do we deliver content in a manner that guarantees its integrity and its ability to reach as many potential viewers as possible? As to the former, I suspect that new criteria for setting prices will eventually emerge and they will not be based on circulation figures but perhaps on file size, number of images, format, and so on. How we deliver the material concerns me more here, and essentially I would argue that if we manage to deliver it in a way that promotes narrative pleasure, then I think that we can answer affirmatively Mike’s basic question about whether or not consumers would be willing to pay for that content. That is, rather than content being a hindrance to conducting business – as editorial wisdom has it, people wont buy magazines with pix of starvation or death or other such journalistic clichés, presumably because readers suffer from image fatigue or they prefer babble about celebrities – it will in fact become one means of enticing more viewers. Let’s consider a different genre in order to get a fresh perspective on this issue. Why do we go to the movies? Movies are full of violence and devastating imagery every bit as unsettling as anything a photojournalist can come up with. And viewing them doesn’t necessarily make us happy. We cry as well as laugh at the movies. We grip the edges of our seats, we endure ghastly scenes of torture and mutilation. A few examples: The beach landing in Saving Private Ryan. The abandoned parents in their lonely home at the end of the heartbreaking Tokyo Story. The famous slit eye in Buñuel’s L’Age d’Or. The slow and clumsy killing of the KGB agent in Hitchcock’s Iron Curtain. The murder of peasants in Platoon. The death of Apu’s wife and his subsequent abandonment of the child that resulted from their union in Satyajit Ray’s third film from the incomparable Apu trilogy. The beating to death by bats of Ed Pesci’s character in Casino. The battering that Jake LaMotta receives at the hands of Sugar Ray in Raging Bull. Almost every one of these is a masterpiece and despite the brutal or heartbreaking content, every one of these compels our attention and evokes praise rather than condemnation. Why? Narrative pleasure. Let me be quite clear: I am not talking about pleasure in a simple sense, the emotional equivalent of sugar on the tongue. I am talking about a psychological state in which is united intellectual, emotional and physical contentment that is brought about not so much by the specific image or theme but by its existence within a structure that provides order, makes sense, and either creates new values or confirms old ones, thus playing an important ideological role in the culture that ought not to be underestimated. Narrative pleasure results from structure, not content. Narrative pleasure is the aesthetic version of Plato’s sociopolitical concept of Justice – a place for everything and everything in its place. It derives from elements such as those considered by Aristotle in his Poetics. Unity, for example. The relation of beginning, middle and end. Suspense and its resolution. The relation of form to content – a quick example of what I mean by this last point can be found in the film Vantage Point. Here we are treated to a story about the assassination of a president given a narrative treatment that undoubtedly is meant to recall Rashoman on the one hand and the historical assassination of Kennedy on the other; that is, we are treated to a replay of events seen through the eyes of various players in an ostensible attempt to explore the significance of perspective, truth, and coherence. What philosophers like to call hermeneutical horizons. The film is an utter disappointment because in the end all the narrative perspectivalism, the splitting up of the plot into distinct points of view held by each character, serves no purpose other than to prolong the suspense, and the actual plot is revealed and followed in the most prosaic and straightforward manner during the last segment, so all we get in the end is an exciting chase and nothing whatsoever said about the larger themes. There is ultimately a disjunction between the form and the content. This is the problem with current methods of telling and distributing our journalistic stories. Our methods are disjunctive, piecemeal, choppy, reductive, and formally inconsequential. We furnish bites and bulletins rather than stories with sufficient body to make it worth our readers’ while to stop and absorb their meaning. We fail to provide meaningful, comprehensive and inventive structure capable of contextualizing the violence and the heartbreak in a way that redeems that content and makes it compelling, rather than just another journalistic cliché – just another skeletal child with flies in its eyes – that either repels or bores the viewer. If we take care to create narratives as compelling as those we flock to see at the cinema, then I see no reason why we cannot count in the future on people to solicit our material, download it, and pay us for it. A pdf file, for example, could tackle a subject in a number of different ways, if we are willing to take the time to master the software and learn the principles of graphic layout. Take for example what I have tried to achieve on the Gagá page from my Dominican Batey website. If you look that page over, you will see the photos and text laid out in a variety of manner, and in a couple spots I have made use of imagery that in itself is not particularly good but combined in an adequate structure manages to tell the story in what I hope is a compelling fashion (I am referring to the section of photos with young kids running about, caught up in the excitement and sexuality of Gagá, as well as the section on whips). Granted, I may have created overly large files that download rather too slowly, but such things can be easily fixed. The point is, I didn’t ignore the narrative structure; on the contrary, I exploited it as fully as I could in order to present the material so as to elicit interest, certainly, but more importantly present it as a fully thought out story, with poetic as well as analytical elements, so ultimately the narrative model is not that of the typical “news story” but instead something more like a novel, in which one finds subplots, a myriad of characters, and a more eclectic mix of materials. That latter point, for me, is very important. As I have argued elsewhere, I think the future of journalism on the web ought to be more eclectic, more polyphonic or intertextual, and cross-disciplinary. This means, inevitably, that we all need to expand our skill set, as the current jargon would put it, in order to keep up with changes in the industry and remain employable. I don’t think this means all that much extra effort, though it does beg questions about adequate compensation. However, while LS members have complained recently about the decision of various news organizations to equip their writers with digital cameras so as to cut back on expenses and consolidate the various aspects of news gathering, I have to say that this has been a salutary development as far as my own survival is concerned, since after years of living with lean cows I am finally getting more work precisely because I can provide both textual and visual content – and frankly I thoroughly enjoy playing both roles. Instead of viewing the consequences of digital journalism as a threat to our existence I think we need to identify their advantages and exploit them diligently so as to control to some extent their direction and their impact on us. And also, allow us to discover in ourselves unsuspected talents and resources that might just add to the pleasure of the work we do. The formal presentation of news hitherto has been dominated by physical structures that are no longer relevant to the forms available to us in the digital age – the left to right, page turning format inherited by magazines from books as well as the fragmented columns and bars layout of newspapers like the Times are relics of the Gutenberg galaxy. Our job in the future is to take up where Gilles Peress and Fred Ritchin left off with their experimental narrative presentation of Bosnia. Our job is to reflect on the nature of html and flash and consider how these might best serve the creation of viable narratives for the next generations, most of whom, even in third world countries where the digital gap impedes consumption of materials from the internet due to the lack of computerization and wide band access to the net, are being schooled sensorially in a whole new mode and whose consciousness must inevitably be altered by this fact. I am coming to believe, as well, that brevity is not necessarily a virtue and that in fact the web is capable of sustaining a more in-depth, comprehensive and “long-winded” approach to story telling. Sure, browsing and clicking is usually a matter of brief encounters, but I am no longer convinced that this is evidence of a deterioration in reading habits or that the web induces a kind of ADD in its browsers. There is browsing, but there is also genuine research – which after all is where the net originated, in scholarly research and the need for researchers to communicate with one another. One of the responses I got from my first multimedia piece, on Dominican syncretic religious practices, was that I left out this or that sect, that I didn’t explore this or that theme – in short, that I was too cursory and too brief. Some of the viewers were prepared, indeed expected, a more filmlike treatment of the theme, something longer and more satisfying. I explained that given the current limitations of webstreaming I didn’t think I could provide such a structure, though I agreed it would be superior; and I wonder still whether this will eventually be possible, but I am convinced that our survival, our prosperity, depends on our ability to create such narrative structures and improve upon the current means of streaming information across the web. You may be aware of a movement called “Slow Food” which has arisen in response to the prevalence of fast food outlets globally and the putative unhealthfulness of such food. What I am advocating here is a greater investment of our time and energy in what could be dubbed “slow news” – news presented in greater depth and without strict allegiance to the time worn principles that govern the reporting of “events.” While it bears resemblance to what is usually called documentary, this approach goes beyond the discursive boundaries normally associated with that genre. I am advocating a form of digital reportage based more on the investigatory practices and principles embodied by the scholarly researchers who originally formed the raison d’être for the creation of the internet. Rather than report that a particular event has occurred, we explore its meaning; rather than note its passing, we fix it, we monumentalize it, we expand upon it through a variety of discourses. We assume that news is inherently, as the name suggests, a matter of reporting that which is “new” or current or instantaneous. Digital cameras and new forms of transmission have promoted this aspect of the news gathering industry, since they allow for speedy delivery of content. While this model will certainly continue to dominate the industry, I think that the web allows for an expansion of this other aspect of journalism, the analytic and investigatory branches of the trade. While we are hardpressed to find work on the frontlines of current events, we may well find that new opportunities will arise in this other market and that even the established media, once they figure out how to make the web pay, may eventually invest more money and effort in this area as well, so that a new kind of journalism can thrive and provide us with the means of making a living as well as pursuing what has to be one of the most interesting vocations available to people with a drive to understand the world about them and the curious habits of humankind.

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:03:45 +0000

Extremely interesting remarks, suggestions and proposals. Thanks

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:08:46 +0000

Jon, You have completely captured the absolute essence of the current photojournalism environment as I see it. Your comments regarding narrative pleasure echo Martin Parr's comments in a recent PDN interview which basically suggest that he disguises his work as entertainment in order for it to be willingly viewed. You have clearly taken considerable time to think this through and put your thoughts eloquently down on paper/screen, for which we should all be very thankful. And there is another question... What do we do now? Given that this realization of where we stand appears to be proliferating at all levels, what should we do to transform our profession? Individual actions are less effective than group actions. Someone, elsewhere, suggested the start of a "movement". What are your, and anybody else's thoughts, on this?

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:07:08 +0000

thanks for this, how do we do what we do with the unfolding dramas before us? j

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:49:10 +0000

Jon, Do you know about the "Amazon honor system":http://zme.amazon.com/exec/varzea/subst/fx/home.html/103-3941795-7999838? I know "one place":http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20647.htm where the system is being used. I do have a "donate" button on my "Schubert Project,":http://www.tomoko-yamamoto.com/multimedia/schubert/Schubert_Project.html but I have not collected money yet. However, I collected a $50 donation from someone I have never met to my multimedia concert last year. He and I "met" through Flickr, and he was interested in my presentation of Schubert lieder with photos as he is a fan of lieders and a native of Austria, now living in the US. My "Schubert Project":http://www.tomoko-yamamoto.com/multimedia/schubert/Schubert_Project.html has been getting a fair amount of visitors, and my program outline and description with photos are regularly accessed. My text translations of several Schubert songs have the first ranking on Google, even though there is a long-standing lieder text site. I sort of wish there were an alternative to Amazon and Paypal to collect money since I don`t want an already big company to get even bigger.

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 03:06:32 +0000

I like the idea of "slow news," and the possibilities it offers. and its something that could change the way people consume content. if only more people used RSS readers, there could be no effort to follow a story, it all gets pushed to the user, giving them all the time in the world to read up on the material. as for getting paid, thats always the tricky part. You're probably not going to be able to run the show yourself, it would be incredibly time consuming to handle the all of the logistics of running it, it could be a full time gig to make things run smoothly. It could work for a collective network of photojournalists. something along the lines of a Mediastorm meets 9rules-like network. one big pot of content for sale to every outlet you could think of. The revenue stream could not only come from subscribers, but to sell content to 3rd parties like other bloggers, to traditional mass-media as well as Ad space revenue. All it needs is to hit a critical mass of buyers and viewers. It could, just possibly work.

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 08:34:00 +0000

As a student photographer who is going to graduate inside a year, this has made me think, thank you.

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:45:37 +0000

Jon-- As a unusually quiet member of Lightstalkers, I find that I must now speak up and congratulate you for the wonderful thoughts you posted above. Your insight and experience is a tremendous benefit to those of us who belong to the LS community. I’ve been working with a designer friend for some time trying to figure out an appropriate and money-winning distribution model for the distribution of stories via the internet. The web has long been a fascinating, and increasingly necessary, platform for documentary distribution. To me, it is exciting that we must evolve our skill set, or maybe I am still too young to know any better. I constantly fluctuate between writer and photographer while working on my projects, and I think this tension is most productive in the long run. The type of work you mentioned, good and important journalism is work that should be published everywhere, and I believe there is no longer any excuse for such quality work not o be published online. There are now many, many fledgling and established sources which publish quality work, even if a documentarian doesn’t have the time or skills to set up her/his own website. Daylight Magazine, Dispatches, and the long defunct Reportage.org sites are just a few examples of online work… But the medium has yet to be stretched and expanded to its full potential. For a view of journalism 2.0, online and making money, try having a look at http://www.michaelyon-online.com/ If you are unfamiliar with Yon’s work, he is an former solider turned freelance reporter, and has been busy over the last several years covering the US wars in Afganistan and Iraq. While he certainly carries a bias, he has attracted a (paying) audience. So far as I can tell he makes money through website donations and more recently, book sales. If nothing else, he is an active, well-worded writer. I don’t endorse Yon, but I do believe he can be a sort of model for the rest of us. I am curious to see what other have to say about your post, Jon. Best -- Zach

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:55:05 +0000

Jon: There are some interesting pieces in the latest edition of Le Monde Diplomatique about the future of journalism and the impact of the changes that are taking place on the profession of journalism. And the pieces are not all positive or laudatory. That being said, I think that the biggest challenge I face at the moment is that when I do start to speak with engagement and depth to photo editors from major publications I can just see their eyes glaze over! Few if any actually engage me with interest about the fundamental issues, or the underlying causes behind the latest crisis or newest sensational war. Few if any are interested in doing stories around the blood/gore/uniforms/guns and many seem to be just working off pre-prepared templates about how the issue/news will be launched out onto the web. In fact, as the editors of Le Monde Diplomatique argue, the need to fill/create new content for what are now essentially 24/7 news web sites means that we need new content faster than ever before, reducing the time to actually do 'journalism' as we knew it i.e. the investigation, the identification of nuances of an issue lost in the initial rush, the broader geo-political or social implications many unforseen and so on and so forth. I can't count the number of times I have felt like a man from mars sitting with editors for whom news is falling off the wire, who are distracted by the latest wire images rushing across their screens, who are under pressure by editors and others to get the latest 'breaking news' out as fast as they can with basically not checking anything or even considering the act of 'fact checking' to be even relevant any more. Into this frenzied world of modern journalism, of 'fly by night' reporting, the instant drop in photographers and of course the many amazing regional photographers, talking about 'slow' is basically ensuring that that you are ejected from the conversation. we need fast, now, and immediate, we need single images that sum up situations, we need the summary and conclusions before the story is even over. The fact remains that news is a business whose principal audience is the advertiser. A news agency, a weekly magazine, a daily paper, a web site, and others make a promise to advertisers, not the readers. The promise is to get a certain number of million eye balls onto a page with an advertisers product. And anything goes to get that eyeball at 8:00am in the morning as the consumer (no longer the reader mind you) rushes to his/her job or slurps down his/her breakfast. Whether the consumer gets depth, or insight, or knowledge, or understanding, or whether our public institutions of democracy are defended, is in fact not a conversation taking place in the news bureaus and tv newsrooms around the modern world. what is taking place is 1) how do we create a sense of urgency and crisis to pull eyes towards our paper, 2) how do we then hold these eys, and 3) how we monetize the attention we have now grabbed of this audience and convince the advertisers to put their money into our product. This is not new. This is all old stuff. But as I speak to student in photographer and photojournalism I am struck by how little they understand the dynamics and motivations of the publications and newspapers they so wish to shoot for. The rush to multimedia is a rush to produce 'entertainment' that sells - to make it easier and simple to consumer a news item without having to really engage it. Here it is, with full color, sound and music, and you can run it off your iphone in 1 minute or less and get back to your conversation with colleagues or your trade screen. This is the business of news. The news follows the financier's needs, not the people's need to know. At least not mainstream news. Its just not what they do. Martin Parr said it best; its all just entertainment, so you better find a way to make the horrors of this world fun to see/hear :) I see what he means, despite the fact that I am repulsed and in fact disappointed by it. I see what he means because it is indeed all going towards entertainment and the most serious issues and problems are being viewed at a distance of negation of any connection between our world, and their, our actions and their misery, our responsibility for their dispossession. Make it fun, it will sell. Make it easy, it will be consumed. He is right - he sells a lot, says little with his pictures, offer no argument, takes no stand, and believes that it is all just 'in the present' and that is all there is. I am repulsed by this, but each time I sit with an editor, I am reminded that I may not like it, but they really don't give a damn if i do, and that my little world of ideals and conviction to the story, or engagement with issues is in fact naive, or maybe even unprofessional. we are speaking amongst ourselves. but editors are the most important element in the chain of a professional photographer. major publications and newspapers retain their tremendous influence in the market, and their reach. we can't ignore it, and we are not individually able to challenge it. the collective global reach of newsweek, time, new york times, washington post, la times, stern, national geographic etc. is tremendous. they are the most effective means to get a story to a market, and they will remain so despite the internet. much like elsewhere, the internet is a distribution channel, even for news, and the big guys own it as well. so what is the solution? well, much like any other such piece, my idea is banal; the solution is to see that our work cannot just be at one level of depth. we are going to have to cater to the current demands of the new media space, while pursuing our engagement in perhaps more personal channels like blogs or specialized sites. i don't think that it is financially feasible to disengage or step away from the mainstream media, but that when embarking on project, we would have to see how to package it for different needs. in fact, jon, you have already suggested this solution in an earlier post i believe. what i do think should not happen is that we just produce the trivial, the entertaining, the simplistic and move on. too many are already doing this. there is a market and a space for engaged work, and then there is the space for the more basic work. we just have to think of our stories in levels of delivery (not necessarily to mean media related). ok, that was perhaps not so interesting, but there it is :) asim

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:39:30 +0000

@Asim Speaking as somebody further down the chain from you. My soul hasn't seen the full horror of the newswire or a real news desk! So I ask 2 things, though I warn you could be fundamentally flawed due to my lack of experience. First can we somehow remove the editor by publishing our slow news with these websites or create our own? Second, if there are websites which cater 24/7 to the masses, there will be somebody around to fill those outlets, that is a given. But what if the mindset changed so that as photojournalists we can see how our work is being watered down and we all produced 'slow news'. What would happen then, if there was no alternative to slow news? But I can see how that wouldn't work in reality; the editor would want it changed like you said to meet the demand from the consumer. Personally, I think the industry created the demand/problem in the first place, nobody told anybody to produce a newspaper everyday. If I compared the situation to the modern soap drama, I remember when they use to be on once or twice a week and then all of a sudden, they are on everyday. More characters were created to give the established characters a rest. I heard nobody asking for 5 days a week of program 'x', but the industry produced it all the same. But while it might move the story on, in a week, the soap goes nowhere, much like having constant breaking news every 15 minutes. I can't watch TV news as I refuse to believe that only 3 or 4 major events are happening in the world on a given news station and they all need to be repeated 4 times an hour, which leaves me feeling bored. I want to see the headlines once or enjoy it at a slower pace. I'm attracted to the idea of slow news. There is such a term as 'nymphomation' and I suffer from it, I'm sure others will to down the road as we become more plugged in to the internet. On a more practical note, the Economist has no problem producing work and an analysis with its weekly publication, it's still fast by the standards Jon is proposing but it is 'slower'! Anyway my 2 thoughts.

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:17:42 +0000

Jon/Asim :))) good thoughts y'all...would love love to tumble in, but just now discovered the thread and am running to catch the metro....will leave some thoughts later in the week... but, ironically, just to let you know, i've submitted a long essay concerning the working life a photographer that is a narrative (or poetic) description of this...submitted to a major Documentary mag and waiting to see if they accept...somehow, i suspect they will pass, which to me still speaks as to how we havent shifted well or deep enough either the paradigmn or the nomenclature by which we describe and wrestle with this... i understand completing Asim's lamentation (though im not sure if the word "entertainment" in Parr's sense was so much about "entertainment" in the sense of "fun" but in the sense of "diversion"...for, in truth, "news" is simply that for most folk: the divertissement by which they hope to channel the sharper edges of their fortune and conscience....im not sure that if we always consider this pejoratively, we'll understand our place... but, i'll let you know what happens with the Mag, and will try to write something for y'all later... it's lovely to see folks still battening down the hatches against the ennui and cynicism...each time i try, i get labled for "ranting"... hugs running b

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:02:54 +0000

jonathan; to take your two points one at a time: you asked "First can we somehow remove the editor by publishing our slow news with these websites or create our own?" indeed, we can, and in fact, that is what a lot of people are trying. i was not suggesting that this should not be done, or that it can't be done. obviously if you have a story/product/material that can be aimed at specific markets than the internet is really the only game in town. what i was point out was simply that the market reach and access of the traditional behemoths remains large and efficient. they have invested millions in their customer base creation, and distribution channels (online, print etc.) and in their brands. in a world beset with information, the brands ironically become even more important. few people will browse random websites for news about the georgia conflict and in the mass of information flow they will turn to what they believe is 'reliable', 'professional', 'tested' and so on. so what i was saying is that we cannot just ignore the channels that have the broadest (nationwide) and largest (customer base) and what their needs are as driven by their business model. you also said "Second, if there are websites which cater 24/7 to the masses, there will be somebody around to fill those outlets, that is a given. But what if the mindset changed so that as photojournalists we can see how our work is being watered down and we all produced ‘slow news’" Again, i am a great admirer of the jon anderson's and personally find his kind of work compelling and far more interesting than 99% of what may win a world press photo award. Of course, mind sets can change, and photojournalists can produce what they want. But photojournalists are not masters of their faith; they are in the end employees of a business, and only for so long as they can deliver to the needs of the business. as in any job. photojournalists are never lone rangers out there exploring the world and returning home with scoops. they are sent out into the world, as employees, or commissioned, to come home with a 'product' whose parameters are defined by an editor/photo editor or other. so there will always be this pressure to respond to the needs of the business. for those who go against the grain and insist on producing 'slow' news, i can only point to what happened to eugene smith at Life. eugene smith took weeks, if not months to produce work that his magazine insisted should be completed in 7 days. back in those days and given his prodigious talent, he could get away with it. today you would not survive a day if you confronted an editor as such behavior. first, there is far far more competition i.e. many more photographers vying for a chance, two, there is a lower threshold of photojournalism quality and most editors are not married to ideas of 'good pictures' - they want the pictures first and as fast as possible, third, photo editors and departments rarely define the structure and final layouts of stories are are increasingly superceeded by the editors themselves, most of whom have no interest or patience when it comes to 'getting the pictures right'. so indeed, you can and must produce your slow work, but i was simply pointing out that we should not see this as a confrontation of opposites. in fact, our slow work complements and enhances our 'fast' work, as the 'fast' work pays our bills to allow us to do the 'slow' work in the first place. no great insight there. just the obvious. but a lot of people think that these are mutually exclusive choices, not merely a series of decisions one makes based on the customers we are trying to serve, one of which is the photographer him/herself with a passion to say something more than s/he is being asked for by his/her paying client. i don't think a few individual photographers producing 'slow' work will confront the editors will any sort of challenge. in fact, these 'slow' photographers will quickly become irrelevant and disappear of the podiums of 'success' and frequent publications. the editors can find similar work easily, or engage a new photographer of equal if not better skill. they will have to still meet different demands - 'slow' and 'fast' to deliver to the client, or someone else will. again, no great insight, just stating the obvious. though of course, photographers could still aim to find a unique niche, space, issue or access which would then indeed place more power in their hands. but this is usually a one time thing; there are a lot of photographers who get this power once or twice, but its not really something you can build a consistent career on. at least i don't think so. but then again, i have not found a niche that i can defened :) and finally, i doubt that i am 'further up the chain' as you say :) i appreciate the complement, but in the professional photography/photojournalism business, the food chain is very very short. its the photographer and the carnivorous publication/customer :) so we stand shoulder to shoulder :)) asim

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:20:03 +0000

Jon - great to see and red your post. Your post gets to the very nut of the problem. Good discussion going on here. Many thanks!

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:56:29 +0000

Folks, I will come back with more, but given my very unsatisfactory internet arrangements currently it is hard for me to keep up with the online community. Plus we never have electricity and now we have no water! ha! Living in a developing nation has its peculiar challenges. Well, no matter, I am shooting and writing more. But I will post a response soon, particularly in reference to Parr's concept of entertainment. With his usual English acerbic wit he makes light of what in fact is the very same concept I am espousing, by preferring to use a word like "entertainment" instead of my own more academic and theoretical term "narrative pleasure" -- hey, what can I say, a professor's habits die hard. But really we are talking about the same thing: esthetics. After all, we are engaged in the making of "representations" or esthetic objects -- regardless of whether you consider yourself an "artist" or "entertainer" you are still using the same tools, so you have to take those tools seriously and exploit them properly. As for entertainment per se, well the Godfather is entertainment -- but hell what a masterpiece! it makes you think. You can satisfy yourself with Jurassic Park, or you can watch La Reine Margot, the Godfather, or any number of "serious" films, that is films with mature themes and well thought out premises, and learn something. Just because it is "entertainment" doesnt mean that it lacks intellectual value. QUite the contrary. Aristotle rated fiction above history as a means of learning. That is because "mimesis" is at the very heart of our cognitive processes. I learned most of what I know, or the valuable stuff at any rate, simply by reading novels. More on this later.

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:36:51 +0000

Jon - I'll look forward to your future thoughts. Hope you're keeping all your batteries charged okay. Heh. Good luck out there.

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 17:05:01 +0000

1. On Slow News, Readership, and Advertising. Asim, I think we are going to have to nominate you to take Sion Touhig’s place, as he is currently busy working in Asia and not so active on LS just now. You have taken up his gauntlet and made some very good points about the working of our industry. I must point out that my own contribution is still largely a theoretical one and based more on my own practices than on, say, the practices of a photographer daily working in the journalistic trenches. And to be fair, I can dream about the potential of “slow news” only because that is what I personally am engaged on producing and I can do so only because of the grants I have managed to win. Just as the Nachtwey model of doing business is not open to all the up and coming photojournalists crowding into the industry, nor is the model I am espousing, or living. There arent enough grants to go around, and grantors too have their agendas and preoccupying themes – which, if you don’t fit, then you wont get their support. While I can dream about the potential of “slow news” and even the possibility that established media might eventually open up a space for it, I am not so naïve as to think that it is inevitable or that it will ever command more than a subsidiary position vis a vis the main business, which is breaking news. And Asim’s analysis of that particular mechanism is dead on the money: news orgs focus on breaking news in order to compel their viewers to focus in turn on that news org’s page or screen, so that the advertisers in their turn can rest assured that X million viewers were there to glance at the accompanying ad. And celebrity content is much more effective than hard news in directing people’s attention to that page or screen, since most people would rather see Angelina Jolie’s tits or Brad Pitt’s buns than pix of starving or battle scarred victims. The turn to celebrity news and the lack of interest in serious news gathering that came about roughly in the 80s is eloquently described in Don McCullin’s autobiography. It put him out of business. On reviewing all that has so far been written above, but in particular what Asim has written, it caused me to realize that I may in fact be advocating a complete rejection of the entire media establishment as it is currently structured. Asim says something in passing that I find interesting and which caused me to reflect on this particular aspect of what it is I am trying to achieve: “I don’t think a few individual photographers producing ‘slow’ work will confront the editors will any sort of challenge. in fact, these ‘slow’ photographers will quickly become irrelevant and disappear off the podiums of ‘success’ and frequent publications. the editors can find similar work easily, or engage a new photographer of equal if not better skill. they will have to still meet different demands – ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ to deliver to the client, or someone else will. again, no great insight, just stating the obvious. though of course, photographers could still aim to find a unique niche, space, issue or access which would then indeed place more power in their hands. but this is usually a one time thing; there are a lot of photographers who get this power once or twice, but its not really something you can build a consistent career on.” Yes, certainly, I think that those of us who might consider working in a different mode pose no challenge to the editorial agenda of the established media, built as it is upon the financing of advertising and consumer capitalism. And that is never going to change – the consumerist drive is all powerful. Remember that most readers are people locked in boring office jobs, or working double blue collar shifts in some repetitive type of manual labor – and what do they do when Friday comes round? They spend that check: they buy “stuff” they don’t really need but it’s “neat” or “·cool” and it fills their dead hours with novelty. So of course their whole fantasy life and their abiding interests are built around the consumerism that also buttresses the production and dissemination of news content. This is also why the “entertainment” that Parr espouses commands such attention – the worker wants to be diverted, he or she wants to escape, because basically life is boring. They want diversion but they don’t necessarily want to think too much. “Human kind cannot bear too much reality.” ( I will get back to these points later on.) But just as plainly people are more than mere consumers and their interests more varied. And I think it is presumptuous as well as shortsighted to accept unquestioningly the validity of this assumption that drives the editorial agenda – it has hardened into a specious manifest truth, which undoubtedly has its value but is not absolute, though it does command absolute loyalty among media workers. And that is why, I guess, that in addition to advocating a different approach to news, I am also advocating a different audience, or at least a different way of thinking about your audience. And this entails a rejection of the editors too: if I am irrelevant to them, they are also irrelevant to me. Their entire effort is geared toward a general readership and the greater the number, the higher the ad revenues. And that is fine, I have no problem with that sort of thinking, and when I submit my material to the traditional organs, I accept the fact that the material will be truncated and edited and, basically, mangled. If it gets accepted at all. For years I tried to get editors to pay attention to what was happening on the sugar plantations here; now certainly some media outfits have published stories on this theme, two of which appear on my webpage (I’ve reproduced one by Antonin Kratochvil and another from a domestic Dominican source). But for the most part editors just werent interested. So I decided to pursue my own agenda and do an end run round the whole media establishment. Because, I realized, those editors and their magazines or papers are totally irrelevant to what I am trying to accomplish. Now this does not mean that I blithely ignore “the channels that have the broadest (nationwide) and largest (customer base) and what their needs are as driven by their business model.” Asim is right – the established media has achieved something that we independents, despite all our new digital armory, will never equal. And frankly, there is a lot to be gained by making a deal with the old devil and enjoying the benefits of that enormous distribution, even if it means that the work appear in a form that is not to my liking. But there are advantages to my more humble approach. Aside from the fact that my work will appear as I wish, and that it will endure far longer than any newspaper article which ends up as tomorrow’s fish wrap, it will also achieve a more intimate, possibly more meaningful relation with the reader. My readership is targetted: I am not concerned necessarily that a million general readers should view my batey website; I am concerned that the greatest number of readers who are linked somehow to the sugar plantations should know that the site exists and that on that site they would find pretty much everything they need. Now this more focused readership is not necessarily very restrictive: conceivably it includes scholars interested in the history or culture of sugar and the plantations; NGO workers; plantation owners and workers; medical and legal people concerned with health or rights issues; people interested in the Dominican Republic; people who want to know what the fuss is about concerning bateys; people who want to learn about the Caribbean; people who are interested in sugar production and consumption; people interested in popular cultural forms like Gagá or religious rites such as vodu – and other categories that I cannot as yet conceive. The readership is bound by a common interest but it remains an eclectic and sizeable group. The variety of discourses that one finds on the site – medical, legal, journalistic, literary and other – guarantees that each type of reader will find something to his or her liking. This is not any different from the eclectic content of a newspaper, which also guarantees that readers of different types will buy the paper – one buys it because they jones if they don’t do the crossword; another buys it for the political content; another for the comix, etc. But rather than focussing on mere numbers, the intent is to reach a more select readership that is predisposed to study the content you provide, to read in depth, because the whole site is set up to promote just that sort of reading experience. Now does this mean that an approach such as mine necessarily excludes me from the possibility of attracting advertiser dollars as a means of funding my independent endeavors? I am not sure, I never considered this as a possible revenue source, though the thought intrigues me. If I were to target certain types of advertisers, just as I target the readers, depending on the themes of the site, perhaps I could in fact attract advertising dollars to fund an enterprise. One of the projects I am starting up deals with the conflict between development and the environment in Latin America, tentatively titled Pacha Mama; conceivably I could enlist the support of Greenpeace and other such orgs, as well as the support of companies that produce and sell green products in order to raise revenues. Of course, advertising rates would have to be predicated on a different set of criteria, and I imagine would have to be lower than usual given the restricted audience and the fact that the subject matter is not breaking news – in other words, the time scheme is rather different: instead of a succession of plenipotentiary moments that repeatedly though intermittently “break,” and thus repeatedly call attention to the “site,” there is a continuum regulated by the long-term presence of the material on the web, the numbers for which are registered by Google Analytics or any other such service. The only things calling attention to the site – instead of breaking news—is Google alerts or RSS feeds or whatever announcing new content and of course the lists generated by search engines notifying “researchers” of the existence of the site. The number of visitors would appreciate over the years, but slowly. While the advertiser could verify the visits to a website, that number is not so important in this context, because we are talking about visits over a very long period of time, visits with a different kind of intent and shape. Advertisers would have to be made to understand that and the fact that while we are talking about smaller numbers, we are also talking about a different set of demographics that might be worth cultivating, along with the fact that the long-term approach for some advertisers might not be a problem and might conceivably harbor advantages – for one thing, the advertisers might be given longer “leases” on the space they rent. Advertising rates would necessarily be lower, they could conceivably suffice to pay for my enterprise, given that it is essentially the work of a one-man band, so the overhead is low. However, since each site is dedicated to a new project and is independent, advertising could be made to pay the bills only retroactively, since the advertisers would be solicited only after the project is done – I doubt you could round up advertisers prior to initiating a project, unless of course this sort of thing became a common practice and advertisers could see the results from previous projects. Different types of endeavors have indeed been funded from the start by sponsors. So maybe we could line up sponsors depending on the project involved. 2. On Narrative, Clicking Links, and the Significance of Play and Entertainment Now it is interesting that Asim mentions Eugene Smith – in fact Smith’s editors did not tolerate his inability to finish stories within the strictures of the contemporary editorial agenda (which was far more liberal than today’s agenda – today we are mere “illustrators” and lucky to get a pic or two published alongside of someone else’s text; but in Smith’s day a photo essay was a real essay. They let the pictures tell the story.). He eventually had to leave Life and we all know what happened with his Pittsburgh project. He applied for Guggenheim grants and pursued the project independently of the media. Before we demonize that media, we must at least recognize that they were prepared to publish the piece, though in a severely truncated form which Smith would not permit. I don’t think that today any magazine would consider doing a similar article, except perhaps for National Geographic, and even there the approach would be more restrictive. When one peruses the work as it appears in the Lyndhurst Books version available from W. W. Norton, one is forced to conclude that Smith had a novelistic narrative style in mind. He was clearly headed in this direction. His early essays were like short stories, usually focused on one figure – the country doctor, the midwife, Schweitzer. But the war changed him, I imagine. With Spanish Village he started to amplify his approach. I have a feeling that narrative structure was always very important to him; he was an avid reader of modern literature, which is all about narrative experimentation of one sort or another. Even his snaps from the loft, usually considered an interesting eccentricity or a mere collection of moments that foreshadow the work of people like Robert Frank, I am willing to bet had a narrative shape in Smith’s mind that would have become manifest had they been published. Regardless, the fact remains that Smith had grown out of the magazine format and needed a medium capable of conveying a novelistic vision. If only the web had existed then. Perhaps he would have found it more adequate. I cannot be sure, but I am intrigued by recent experiments that suggest that there is at least a potential for more significant forms of visual expression. The first that springs to mind is of course Mediastorm – while I agree that much multimedia is timid and geared toward a “breaking news” type of consciousness or consumer, this site seems to me more in tune with the kind of values I am espousing, since it is pretty obvious that the stories there cannot be viewed “in 1 minute or less [so you can] get back to your conversation with colleagues or your trade screen.” But currently I have problems with multimedia that stem from my frustration with living on the other side of the digital gap from most of you in developed nations – if the world wide web cannot in fact be delivered equally to the wide world, then we need to re-engineer it or improve our software to the point that downloads are effortless. I also worry about the extra work entailed and the low compensation received for all that effort. The second experiment that caught my attention is this intriguing website designed to promote Athens, Ohio: it reads like a novel, or at least a collection of short stories – say, the digital version of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio! Well, its moral and thematic reach may not in any way equal that of Anderson’s book, but the physical experience of “reading” the site is not all that different from reading a collection of stories. There is a variety of content, and the reader can get lost in material, clicking around to one’s heart’s content. And clicking around is not to be dismissed lightly, nor is getting lost in the material. That latter experience is sorely missing from most news coverage. Proust got it right: narratives serve to absorb us, to allow us to lose ourselves in an alternate reality – and for it to have that power the reality must be complete, comprehensive, variegated. Even its longueurs serve to perpetuate the daydream that sweeps us up. I think that Ritchin and Peress really hit on something with their attempt to redefine narrative on the Bosnia project, which is the third experiment that lately dominates my thoughts. While many emphasize the fact that it put the reader in control over the narrative structure – or rather, the path one might follow through this structure – thus empowering the reader, I feel that ultimately that control is illusory, that any narrative, again as Proust makes abundantly clear, is capable of being momentarily usurped by the reader, and in fact a narrative firmly under control of the author is ironically the best capable of allowing a reader to experience this illusion of freedom and control. Reportedly, the authors ultimately felt disappointed with what they had created and believed that they had failed to achieve their goals; but I still puzzle over the whole thing and I wonder whether in fact they had hit on something perhaps more vital to the narrative experience and more significant than the issue of control. For the first time on the web, I was actually able to lose myself in a narrative, to wander about, to dawdle and explore. And all through the same simple mechanism that usually facilitates a frenetic and cursory instantaneous browsing: clicking on links. This time clicking allowed for a deeper experience. Clicking allows us to cut across narrative paths, to move in different directions across the “plot” that is (and ought to be) laid out for us. For me, as a reader, the important thing is not authorial control but readerly freedom. We don’t turn pages anymore; we click on links and we are transported into new spaces whose orientation is anything but linear. It is perhaps geometric. The experience is playful, entertaining, but dead serious as well. As Nietzsche put it, “a man's maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play.” Play is serious business; it is the means whereby we master and imbue with meaning the object world. It is not for nothing that Schiller placed such emphasis on what he called “spieltrieb,” the drive to play. And that is where I part company with Parr. Parr I guess is a bit of a cynic -- the type who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. I don’t believe that all cynics are such – La Rochefoucauld, for example, definitely exhibits a moral acuity that lends his maxims weight and substance. Something that cannot be said for Parr’s images. While I would reject his definition of “entertainment” if it is only about fulfilling a simplistic need to have “fun” and “make it easy,” I would still argue that he hits upon a deeper truth by invoking the term, because after all, it is clear from what I have said about the movies that “entertainment” need not at all be mere “fun and games” but something much more moving, more unsettling even. There is entertainment, and then there is entertainment. There is American Pie, and there is The Iliad. Why cannot we seek in a report about the war in Afghanistan the same elevated moral truths (and I do NOT mean moralistic) we find in The Iliad? Or Thucydides’ Pelopponesian Wars (to cite an example closer in genre)? And why cannot we find there the same “pleasure” that compels us to plough through those ancient tomes? Well, there is good reason. I just watched “Afghanistan: The Forgotten War” on CNN, and I was impressed by the coverage. I was also dismayed by the copious evidence suggesting parallels with Vietnam, though the reporter made no such analogy overtly. (My personal feeling is that this conflict will indeed become this generation’s Vietnam, though its meaning and consequences will be altered by the fact that this is a global conflict with different players). Anyway, the purpose of this program was not to address these larger themes, but to let us know the nature of the conflict and what was brewing on the ground. More than enough material for this short but comprehensive piece to cover. And this is not at all a bad thing: because it leaves open the possibility for other types of coverage, such as what I am suggesting. I do not mean that the media should indulge its lamentable penchant for Oprah Winfrey style, “human interest” stories to balance the coverage. That sort of didactic and mawkish reportage is not at all what I seek. What I want is something along the lines of postmodern pastiche, whose breadth might serve to complement and deepen the coverage that organs like CNN excel at providing. 3. Big Things in Little Packages This leads me to another point raised by Asim: sure, packaging a story in different ways for different media can be one way of allowing us to satisfy our own needs as well as the needs of the media. I see no reason why, for example, having completed a story to one’s own liking, one might not publish the personal unedited version on a blog of one’s own, while allowing a newspaper or magazine to publish a different, even unsatisfactory version, according to their own criteria. The latter would be seen by a large readership, while the former might be consulted by some of those who wish to view a more comprehensive version – or be visited by one’s fans: after all there are all kinds of people who seek out the work of a particular photographer or writer whom they admire, wherever that work might appear. I mentioned in another thread Salgado’s method of breaking up his projects into smaller packages and marketing those packages globally to different magazines. Course, I am sure editors treat him with a bit more respect and may heed any formatting ideas he suggests, but even he must kowtow to the editorial and layout restrictions imposed by each magazine. Nonetheless, his modus operandi clearly allows for the appearance of his work in several different forms and prioritizes its publication, the need to get it out there, in whatever forms available to him. Bear in mind that in fact what I am describing here is no different from what many writers too have done ever since the press came into being. The wonderful essays by Kapuscinski all started out as media assignments which he later amplified and published in books that gave him total control over the content and form of his work. Joseph Mitchell, who was lucky enough to work for a magazine that appreciated his talents and didn’t screw too much with his writing, nonetheless felt compelled to republish all his essays in books, since he was clearly dissatisfied with the magazine format. I am not advocating a restructuring of the media establishment; I am not advocating “slow news” as a replacement for breaking news; rather, I think of this as a third alternative for those of us who hitherto have operated more or less as described above: having our work appear in the established media according to their behest and subsequently publishing it in books to allow for more personal control over its presentation. Here we have a means that is potentially more pertinent to the issues we cover and yet more flexible and open ended so as to allow for greater control and creative freedom. We get to have our say our way, we don’t have to wait to collate all the material and publish it in a book (which in turn would be vetted anyway by the publishing firm and its editors), and we can exploit the formal possibilities offered by digital publication on the web. In a sense I am advocating a ramified strategy for dealing with the the various “theaters of operation” where our work might appear – that we should exploit the traditional media outlets to the extent that we can, publish books when we can, and create dedicated websites that thoroughly treat any given subject in ways that neither of the previous options can. Slow news is an amalgam of the three practices that have defined my life: there is the concern with narrative form, derived from literary studies; the depth and breadth of coverage – that is, a multitude of analytic and artistic discourses – derived from scholarly models; with both focused upon journalistic themes, so that the need to bear witness and perhaps advocate change remain guiding principles motivating the enterprise

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:08:27 +0000

The establishment is crumbling.

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:08:49 +0000

I'm being serious.

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 01:10:57 +0000

The following was cross-posted at "Evolution of Photojournalism II". Hey John (Horniblow) - great to hear from you (and indirectly from Lisa). Sure, quality of images is a key factor. How do you feel about the quality of our "story-telling" capabilities? A couple of points on this: 1. Does there need to be a differentiation between news photographers and photojournalists? I see news photographers all around who shoot a subject in an effort to help illustrate a story written by a reporter/journalist. The photo frequently adds little value to the story and the "picture is worth a thousand words" metaphor is not supported. In fact, the body of the story often has to be read and absorbed in order to understand the context of the photograph. I'm expecting howls of protest and derision on that comment but hey, I think it could be an important point. I think of a photojournalist as a journalist who uses photographs, instead of words, to tell a story. Is that an over-simplification of reality? Is that stating the obvious? Or did I just alienate myself from the entire profession? 2. Now this gets in to an overlap with Jon Anderson's excellent thread http://www.lightstalkers.org/narrative-pleasure-digital-journalism-and-slow-news. Asim made some interesting comments about how we work with editors, and can we do without editors. I am not in a position to answer that but do feel that there are alternative ways of considering the matter. For the newspaper shooter, an editor is probably always going to be part of life. An editor almost always will define what story needs to be shot, what news needs to be covered and from what angle, and will send a photographer on his/her way to meet the editor's/newspaper's requirements. These will generally be the breaking news photographs that are the mainstay of daily newspapers. Other types of editor may be far less directive about what they expect from a photographer. The creative brief may be looser, the timeline may be longer, the "angle" may be less defined. These would be stories that take on more of a narrative look and feel, that may run in weekly or monthly magazines, and may be the sort of work that more of us would like to do. To John Horniblow's point, is this how we should aim to spend more of our time, on the more detailed, longer time-lined, narrative projects? Is that how we should differentiate? It is certainly my preference to do this type of work rather than "man-bites-dog" stories. But do we just give up on shooting the breaking news stuff because there is so much citizen competition? No. As John says, quality has to matter. Maybe editors need to do a better job of commissioning or selecting photographs that illustrate a story more effectively. Could we get to a point where we can truly do without editors, perhaps when we are all self-publishing our multimedia projects to a subscription-only, ad-revenue-rich, on-line magazine (my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek)? Would we WANT to get to that point? I was recently told a story by a student who I was going to be teaching. He told me that Ed Kashi was chatting with him and compared himself to a gold miner, shooting many photographs that were then passed to another person to "process", i.e. find the gold nuggets. That person then puts the selects together in to a compelling story. The student asked me what I thought of this approach. I know that photographers do take this approach but, to be frank, I hate it. By way of response, I asked the student if he would prefer to be a film director or the cameraman. He chose the director role and I agree. I want to have control over what I shoot, how I shoot it, and how I present it. Does that mean that I shun the help of an editor? No. Editors know the market that we are trying to sell in to. They know what photographs will appeal, or will have the greatest impact. They have a sense for which company is buying what, and when. They can most certainly be an asset to us and we should nurture those relationships whenever appropriate. OK, back to some basics. As documentary photographers, what are we trying to achieve? My goal is to try to make a difference in the world, to a few, or to many. Traditionally, this has been achieved by taking photographs of subjects in need, and having those shots published in magazines and newspapers, or shown on the television news. One of the reasons for starting this, and other, discussions is the recognition that the market for this work is changing, and we need to respond to that change. But whatever the changes may be, my goal is still the same, to try to make a difference to the world (and get paid for doing so). How, then, can I pursue my goals while dealing with the changes that are becoming increasingly tangible? Martin Parr admitted to wrapping photojournalism into a form of entertainment, in order for it to be readily viewed. Jon Anderson talks cleverly of narrative pleasure. I wholeheartedly agree that any steps that can be successfully taken to effectively capture the attention of our desired audiences, should be fully explored. What other options do we have? Many of us talk of working with, or have worked with NGO’s. I recently wrote a blog entry about this for Black Star which can be found on my own blog at http://mikefoxphotojournalist.blogspot.com/2008/08/working-with-ngos-alternative.html. PDN recently ran an article discussing a similar topic. The August 2, 2008 article by Edgar Allen Beem titled, The State of the Art Report: Photojournalism Survival, tells us “as photo budgets at traditional print publications shrink, enterprising photojournalists are using a variety of venues to get their stories in front of the public.” What I am getting at, here, is an option for us to achieve our goals by working with corporate sponsors. Which companies provide the materials and tools to rebuild torn-down villages? Which companies provide the engineering expertise to develop new power plants and divert rivers to supply water to drought areas? Which manufacturers provide pharmaceuticals, school books, copper wire, water pumps etc., to help victims of extreme situations? Those companies are likely to be involved in these activities because it is a part of their corporate giving program. And why do they have a corporate giving program? Because, aside from tax breaks and their own feel-good factor, they want to be perceived as a caring, nurturing organization by their customers and shareholders. Marketing and advertising budgets for these organizations are huge. $10,000 is a rounding error. And they are frequently open to new ideas and projects that help them establish and maintain the perception that they are a “good company to do business with.” How much do you think that might be worth to a major pharmaceutical or engineering company? $100,000? $1,000,000? Projected advertising spending for 2007 was pegged at $298 billion. Many corporations are recognizing that the best form of advertising and marketing is based on reality -- customer testimonials, case studies, success stories. Look at the popularity of reality TV shows. It’s crazy! But it means that those corporations also recognize that a documentary/journalistic approach to their advertising and marketing can be more effective, and often cheaper to produce than the more traditional, large scale ad campaigns and commercial shoots. The journalism style is also more flexible for them. They can respond more quickly to changes in the market, and capture newly identified target customers based on near real-time data. Wow. This sounds like an opportunity right? Yes indeed! At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are one or two of you who are thinking that shooting photojournalism for an organization with a profit-driven agenda goes against every moral code you ever felt compelled to live by. OK. How do you deal with a newspaper editor who tells you to go and shoot a subject in such a way that it helps illustrate a certain story? That doesn’t sound so objective to me. And what is the news editor’s ultimate goal? To satisfy his/her boss who, in turn, wants to sell more newspapers, at a profit, I suspect. Shock, horror! We have been photographing a specific “side” of a story to benefit profit-motivated organizations for years!! It looks like we are going to all become corporate photojournalists. Will it help us achieve our goal, to make a difference? Yes. If those sponsoring corporations are seen in a good light, their stock price will increase, they may generate higher revenue, and they will have more money to give to the causes we want to represent. The work that we produce for them can be distributed at lower cost (or free). We are getting paid by them to shoot their projects, and it is in their interest to distribute the work in a way that reaches as wide an audience as possible. The wider the audience, the more likely it is that the corporation will be broadly recognized in a positive way. Again, that helps drive up share price, customer perception, and sales. At the same time, the audience can be made more aware of the issues at hand, and guided towards a call to action. Those are my thoughts, so far. They are constantly evolving but this is where I am right now. At present, it feels kinda lonely because I seem to be doing this by myself. Others may be adopting a similar approach but we are not connected. I see the value in a single professional body that can bring the benefits of a collective to the adoption of new approaches to our industry. Representing a united viewpoint to existing and new employers is best done when there is a high level of common purpose. OK, enough for this essay (which was originally going to be a couple of paragraphs). Thoughts?

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:31:42 +0000

Slow format long detailed threads like this are just brilliant. Lightstalkers is back! Formulating thoughts on this myself now. Jon, thanks once again for your thoughtful, considered presence here. Considerable even.

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:39:05 +0000

I'm glad Patrick Yen is here reading this. He's something of a multimedia envelope pusher.

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 23:25:16 +0000

Getty photographer Brent Stirton has some interesting things to say about the corporate world and photography here http://www.1854.eu/2008/09/the_economics_of_photojournali.html

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:07:26 +0000

Thanks for the post, Joe. Interesting commentary from Brent who seems to be on board with the direction that this thread is trying to take...

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 23:27:47 +0000

Another comment by Leeson about how he is working and why he goes out of Dallas Morning News in PDN http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/content_display/photo-news/photojournalism/e3i8f41b4ad7b54e90074fdee92385f11ca

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:20:34 +0000

The Stirton interview is more interesting for what it DOESNT say -- the omissions, given the rather cursory nature of the piece, are rather significant. Take the point about AIDS, for example. Stirton claims that big business has done more than govts to alleviate AIDS in AFrica. But that is not really true. Remember that in fact the big drug companies refused to aid these nations and it is safe to say that many lives were lost before some kind of arrangement was reached. I am not sure, but I imagine, as is the case here in the Caribbean, that orgs like Planned Parenthood, by making condoms freely available to scores of people, probably did much more initially to stem the tide of AIDS. Bear in mind that Big Business and the Media inevitably make for strange bedfellows despite all that has been said above --because ultimately the goals of each are supposed to be different: Big Business seeks profit (witness the wonderful little slip in the interview about the corporations' need for workers being the pragmatic reason behind the attention they have paid to the problem of AIDS), often without any regard for humanistic or moral concerns; whereas the media, supposedly, is motivated by the search for truth, for justice and other such humanistic themes. You go to bed with these guys and you are likely to wake up with fleas. But to be honest, I wouldnt absolutely rule out working with corporations. The media itself is a corporate entity and suffers from all the flaws one would expect to find there. Nonetheless, depending on which company, which cause, how much freedom I would be given, how much control the corporate entity would exercise, etc etc -- depending on these and other variables, I might be tempted to cultivate relations with Big Business in order to carry out my work. This interview sparked a bit of a debate offline among some of us, and I decided to play devil's advocate and point out that despite the significant issues such a liaison raises, there might indeed be a way to arrange it to our mutual benefit without compromising our integrity or goals. I was speaking hypothetically, since I have never entered into any such relation, but I imagine it might be possible to enlist the support of companies with allied interests -- for example one project I am starting up has to do with the conflict in Latin America between Development and the Environment. Well, why couldnt I solicit support from orgs like Greenpeace, or, say, companies that manufacture "green" products, or thinktanks that promote democratic reform, etc? It seems that there is a bit of room for maneuvering here, though I would enter into this devil's bargain cautiously. I have had personal experience along the lines that Stirton suggests vis a vis influencing policy and practice -- one of the ways I make my living here is by writing reports on various aspects of Dominican society for a thinktank that was created by the president. At a conference last year hosted by the Economist, I was surprised to hear the president actually quote me and adopt some of the measures I had recommended in my report on tourism. By directing my comments via this channel instead of the usual media outlets -- who had all reported on these matters and made similar recommendations -- I was able to exercise an influence that probably would not have existed otherwise. My point is merely that Stirton is right to suggest that there are other, possibly more effective ways to get our message out there, and we shouldnt be too quick to discount them. On the other hand, we need to keep our eyes on the prize and be very very honest about the pitfalls of working with powerful interests that very well might compromise our endeavors morally or aesthetically. I have always pretty much worked best working alone, and I deeply mistrust all group endeavors. The word "team" sends shivers down my spine. But one way or the other we are bound to end up working with larger groups so we have to do so conscientiously and perspicaciously.

Re: Narrative Pleasure, Digital Journalism and "Slow News"

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 09:57:51 +0000

Brilliant, stimulating and inspiring post! I needed this like a glass of water in the desert!!