Daily Print and the Death of Photojournalism: Suicide by Choking

I have had an interesting week. First, I was asked to write a small “thought provoking” article for The Journalist — obviously somebody had read my post from Vancouver Olympics. Then Helsingin Sanomat asked me to make a short presen­tation on my views concerning the future of the media in the net and some of the approaches I’d see as part of that future. Those of you who are not Finnish: HS is the biggest and the most influential daily in the country — sort of our New York Times or Washington Post.

These are small things as such, but both of these I consi­dered as a great challenge and a rare honor — and I really tried my best, really took them seriously. Jesus, writing however small a piece to a paper read by all profes­sional journa­lists in this country — people who write for a living. And then trying to have the balls to walk infront of guys who have won POY like ten times and bluntly state that their work is growing obsolete and it might not be appreciated anymore… Boy was I nervous — and I still am. I sincerily hope I did not offend anybody beyond repair?

The piece I wrote is short and the majority of readers will skip it I’m sure. I had a limit of 2400 characters (yes, characters — I first thought it was words and I was really rocking…) — and that does not give you that much room to play with. But the topic is extremely important — as it is literally a matter of life and death — and I think worth repeating here.

As the subjects of these two “events” are strongly related — and very close to my heart — I thought I do this: let me rewrite here what I wrote for The Journalist. Then,let me discuss it further along with some of the most essential points I came up with preparing my presen­tation — and I will do this is the next post.

And who knows, maybe here between the posts I get some commentary/feedback which raise some other interesting questions ;-).

I suggested that they’d use Suicide by Choking (Itsemurha kuris­ta­malla) as a headline and I am totally shocked that they did. A very visual choice of words… but oh, so true:

(JOURNALISTI 6/2010): A SUICIDE BY CHOKING

The long term strategy for our daily print seems to be based on cutting costs. You minimize the money you spend — that is money spend in the production of the news — and continue the business as usual. But, does history know a single branch of any industry which has survived using this as their main strategy? No, because the equation is totally impos­sible — even theore­tically thinking.

Cutting production costs can be a great help and a necessity in a temporary crisis situation. It can be used as tactics, but not as a strategy. You can resuscitate with it — but that’s all.

It is also a generally acknow­ledged fact that any modern company in order to survive uses (the order of) one third of their profits for R&D — and does not give it away as a dividend to share­holders. As all the major print medias are listed in the stock excange, their financial figures are public and they are there for all of us to see. R&D — if it exists at all and if you can find it — is the tiny, tiny figure right at the end.

But I should be talking about images, photo­jour­nalism and the future of these two. What have they got to do with this?

Everything.

Photos are an easy and an obvious source for apparent savings. You assign less — and you use copyright free or stock images instead. You use freelancers, carefully picking the ones with the lowest rates. You further cut the rates, offer nickel-and-dime-deals taking all the commercial rights — with no compen­sation, naturally. You tell the poor souls still trying to survive in this profession “you know how many photo­graphers would kill for this…?”. You don’t replace the overworked, still remaining staffers once they retire.

A very grim view of the future.

Someone said that cutting profes­sional (photo)journalists is like trying to solve famine by sending smaller clothes. I could not agree more. 

Yet, photo­jour­nalism could be a central element when trying to to create new ways of telling the news — and this could lead to a stragegy for the tradi­tional print publica­tions finding their form of expression in the net. But: an essential requi­rement for this to happen would be strong R&D which presently — at least in Finland — is non-existent.

The web offers limitless possi­bi­lities — and realizing this, all the newspapers have gotten their sites set up. And yet, 95% of the sites still continue pushing their “500 digits and one horizontal photo” on nearly every page. An occasional gallery with agency images or a blurry non-infor­mative video with barely unders­tan­dable audio here and there do not really raise the overall quality of these sites.

In front of the limitless possi­bi­lities the web offers the reaction is: hyper­ven­ti­lation — and no action.

In Finnish, the web is often referred to as the New Media. The English term Rich Media is much better — and it is exactly this “richness” which I yearn for: a true reincar­nation for the use of images and photo­jour­nalism — in totally unprece­dented forms and ways never experienced before. No, I do NOT mean those disgusting videoclips — usually done with a cellphone — plastered on the sites of our tradi­tional print­media. No, I mean real photo­jour­nalism — visual story­telling done with ambition and extreme profes­sional attitude. Profes­sional standards. Combining images and compelling story­telling, sound, video, animated graphics etc. into a real, meaningful journa­listic content. It requires a change of attitude for the management as well as for the grassroot journa­lists; it requires learning and educating yourself, it requires courage to face the facts, to push forward; it requires vision, some money…

And now — if not sooner — I have reached the point where I can hear the loud “BULLSHIT — there is no money to be made in the net…” I disagree but no more on that here. Instead, let me answer: the compulsive, idiotic saving-as-a-strategy does not generate revenue in the long run either. That might work for a bank but not for daily print trying to survive.

As I said: to be continued…