When photojournalists become only memorable


Dan Gillmor has an interesting and vivid snapshot on “The Demise of the Photojournalist.”

The photojournalist’s job may be history before long. But photojournalism has never been more important, or more widespread.

Citizen journalism evangelist Gillmor says professional photojournalists will not be able to compete because they can’t be everywhere news happens, and the tools are cheap enough that someone on the scene will have a camera and will take the shot or video. This will leave the ranks of the professional photojournalist to dwindle down much as the ranks of portrait painters
dwindled.
I’m not quite sure the displacement is as airtight as he suggests. How much of the photojournalism you see in newspapers and magazines is breaking news? Breaking news photojournalism is often truly compelling photos, but what makes up most of the “art” in a daily newspaper or magazine? Hint: It’s not the breaking news used in Gillmore’s examples.
But he’s right. We may soon come to see the most compelling photojournalism coming not from professional journalists, but from people who happened to be there and captured life as it unfolded in the moment. The disruption of traditional Media (aka “Big Media”) continues at every level from business model to the photographer on assignment.
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