4 ms·

I believe you are very wrong. The situation you described befits mass produced clickbait over well researched articles of high journalistic integrity. Local ne

I believe you are very wrong. The situation you described befits mass produced clickbait over well researched articles of high journalistic integrity. Local news is dead and along with it, local perspective. News photographers are significantly better photographers than the everyday person with a phone, but the coverage of amateur images and video is game changing. That said, much of news photography is being in the right place at the right situation and many of that profession are particularly brave, clever and devoted.

renewiltord 6y ago
News photogs had one advantage: good equipment. Now people want authenticity and everyone has equipment. No one really cares all that much about the one carefully posed photo some news photog decided to take because his boss told him to represent some view. You may get a million views and your NatGeo / J.D.Power Asia-Pacific Best Photo of the Week or whatever nonsense but the next kid using his iPhone to record with image stabilization is going to get two million. Because he has something you don't: he's there and he's authentic. "High journalistic integrity" was a fiction we all collectively believed because ultimately we wanted the dopamine hit of "knowing" stuff. But it's over: journalism is now democratized. No more controlled lies. Now everyone can lie as powerfully. And that is a good thing for information.
- antiterra 6y ago
  I agree with you to the extent that so-called ‘photo-journalism’ is far more editorial and subjective than widely thought. However, journalists absolutely believe in a number of values and, as a whole, hold themselves to them. There exist a number of articles which stand as culturally important works of nonfiction. We are going to have significantly less of those, and a lot more blunders like the Bloomberg chip thing because the structures are gone. Fundamentally, I sense you just have something against the idea of expertise and ordained authority. I get that. It’s ridiculous that the Academy Awards are seen as an authoritative measurement of how good films are. But that doesn’t eliminate the wide spectrum of sophistication and depth that is much more than a TED Talk dopamine hit. The incentives and security required for in-depth, long-term reporting are gone. That’s bad.
  - hardbig 6y ago
    > However, journalists absolutely believe in a number of values and, as a whole, hold themselves to them. The last couple of years has really hammered home how false this is Journalists are more interested in propaganda for their political parties as well as doxxing & harassing people.
    - antiterra 6y ago
      I don’t think it’s as bad as you think it is, but I do think the reason it’s gotten worse is because the industry’s profit model collapsed. Now an article often has to be sensational or trigger a righteous rage in its reader, or you won’t get paid for it.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    The difference between the culturally significant works of non-fiction and Bloomberg News and the NYT¹ is that we can't verify the lies of the former because they are temporally distant. Haha, I think you're right about the idea of ordained authority. The difference between the academy awards and news is that you don't want sophistication in the latter. Sophistication is where truth goes to die. You want a sort of dullness to the guy: he shouldn't be too smart or too powerful so he doesn't get one over you. I've obviously got no problem with the Academy Awards or the Pulitzer or whatever. But truth and artistic quality are different things. The J.D.Power thing is just a reference to the fact that sometimes you see an award for a product and you know it is a shit product. It's sort of like a five star review on Amazon that says "In exchange for my honest and unbiased review I received this product for free". Yup, that means the product is crap. You know it, I know it. That's how you know that Chevys are shit: JD Power award. It's like if you have an MSCE: probably a shit engineer. ¹ Amusingly, the reason I knew they were bullshitters is I verified a completely unrelated news article years ago where I was a relative authority, sent them the correction, and waited. I've done this for a couple of newspapers - so I have a personal reckoning of who is a bullshitter on what. And if you haven't done that, how do you know? It's so easy to do!
    - antiterra 6y ago
mc32 6y ago
On the other hand news photographers can frame things to their POV. Not that nothing can be neutral, but certainly photographers are known for POV or timing that enhance a narrative.
- antiterra 6y ago
  That’s largely why I’m careful not to use the term ‘photo-journalist.’

renewiltord 6y ago

News photogs had one advantage: good equipment. Now people want authenticity and everyone has equipment. No one really cares all that much about the one carefully posed photo some news photog decided to take because his boss told him to represent some view. You may get a million views and your NatGeo / J.D.Power Asia-Pacific Best Photo of the Week or whatever nonsense but the next kid using his iPhone to record with image stabilization is going to get two million. Because he has something you don't: he's there and he's authentic. "High journalistic integrity" was a fiction we all collectively believed because ultimately we wanted the dopamine hit of "knowing" stuff. But it's over: journalism is now democratized. No more controlled lies. Now everyone can lie as powerfully. And that is a good thing for information.

antiterra 6y ago
I agree with you to the extent that so-called ‘photo-journalism’ is far more editorial and subjective than widely thought. However, journalists absolutely believe in a number of values and, as a whole, hold themselves to them. There exist a number of articles which stand as culturally important works of nonfiction. We are going to have significantly less of those, and a lot more blunders like the Bloomberg chip thing because the structures are gone. Fundamentally, I sense you just have something against the idea of expertise and ordained authority. I get that. It’s ridiculous that the Academy Awards are seen as an authoritative measurement of how good films are. But that doesn’t eliminate the wide spectrum of sophistication and depth that is much more than a TED Talk dopamine hit. The incentives and security required for in-depth, long-term reporting are gone. That’s bad.
- hardbig 6y ago
  > However, journalists absolutely believe in a number of values and, as a whole, hold themselves to them. The last couple of years has really hammered home how false this is Journalists are more interested in propaganda for their political parties as well as doxxing & harassing people.
  - antiterra 6y ago
    I don’t think it’s as bad as you think it is, but I do think the reason it’s gotten worse is because the industry’s profit model collapsed. Now an article often has to be sensational or trigger a righteous rage in its reader, or you won’t get paid for it.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  The difference between the culturally significant works of non-fiction and Bloomberg News and the NYT¹ is that we can't verify the lies of the former because they are temporally distant. Haha, I think you're right about the idea of ordained authority. The difference between the academy awards and news is that you don't want sophistication in the latter. Sophistication is where truth goes to die. You want a sort of dullness to the guy: he shouldn't be too smart or too powerful so he doesn't get one over you. I've obviously got no problem with the Academy Awards or the Pulitzer or whatever. But truth and artistic quality are different things. The J.D.Power thing is just a reference to the fact that sometimes you see an award for a product and you know it is a shit product. It's sort of like a five star review on Amazon that says "In exchange for my honest and unbiased review I received this product for free". Yup, that means the product is crap. You know it, I know it. That's how you know that Chevys are shit: JD Power award. It's like if you have an MSCE: probably a shit engineer. ¹ Amusingly, the reason I knew they were bullshitters is I verified a completely unrelated news article years ago where I was a relative authority, sent them the correction, and waited. I've done this for a couple of newspapers - so I have a personal reckoning of who is a bullshitter on what. And if you haven't done that, how do you know? It's so easy to do!
  - antiterra 6y ago

mc32 6y ago

On the other hand news photographers can frame things to their POV. Not that nothing can be neutral, but certainly photographers are known for POV or timing that enhance a narrative.

antiterra 6y ago
That’s largely why I’m careful not to use the term ‘photo-journalist.’