Category: Journalism

July 19, 2018

Sexual Harassment in Photojournalism

Kristen Chick has published an extensive report at the Columbia Journalism Review about sexual harassment in the photojournalism industry. If you are reading this, you need to go read that. It is not optional. There is a lot of information to process there. As a male who has been in the industry for almost three decades, I want to be...

Categories Business & Industry/Ethics & Legal/Journalism/Photojournalism

July 6, 2018

Know Your Sources, Deeply

Andrew W. Lehren, Emily R. Siegel and Merritt Enright at NBC News broke a story this week about the First Lady receiving royalty payments that may have come from news outlets … without them knowing it. Many of the photographs in the Getty Images archive are from a photographer who seems to have an interesting relationship with the Trump family....

Categories Business & Industry/Ethics & Legal/Journalism/Photojournalism/Thoughts & Theory

May 5, 2018

Visualizing Autism

I am going to put this right up front – I think Craig Walker may be one of the most important photojournalists of our time. He won earned two Pulitzer Prizes while at the Denver Post, one for a story on a kid joining the Army and a second on a Marine coming back from war. This week, the Boston...

Categories Advice & Learning/At Work/Craft/Good Work/Journalism/Photojournalism

April 20, 2018

Seeing the South

I have a couple of friends, photojournalists with common but wide backgrounds, and we keep talking about doing some kind of project together. A road trip, an essay, a deep exploration of a place. But we just keep talking about it, mostly because that’s all we have time for. And seeing pieces like this Andrew Moore gallery on the Bitter...

Categories Craft/Good Work/Journalism/Photojournalism

April 6, 2018

The Hypocrisy of a Corporate Mandate Urging Independence

By now, you’ve seen the video montage that Deadspin created, with anchors from dozens of Sinclair Broadcasting Group stations reading the same corporate-issued script. You’ve seen the response from media associations like the National Press Photographers Association (and seen the consequences of that statement), you’ve read the analysis from folks like Al Tompkins at the Poynter Institute. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer...

Categories Advice & Learning/At Work/Business & Industry/Ethics & Legal/Journalism/Photojournalism/Thoughts & Theory

March 21, 2018

The Ethics of Self-assigned Work

In a piece for the Poynter Institute from 2017, Kainaz Amaria talks about the moment she realized she wasn’t going to be a conflict photographer and the underrepresentation of women in photojournalism. But there’s one line in there, one line that I wish every student and young professional would pay attention to: It’s that I couldn’t justify asking someone to...

Categories Advice & Learning/At Work/Business & Industry/Ethics & Legal/Journalism/Photojournalism

March 19, 2018

They Exist

Anderson Cooper interviewed the artist known as JR for 60 Minutes and it’s worth 14 minutes of your time. It’s not journalism, it’s art, but it’s interesting how he thinks about his transition from being a graffiti artist to doing these photo installations. If you have a few more minutes, after the regular segment airs there’s an Overtime segment with...

Categories Business & Industry/Journalism/Photojournalism

March 16, 2018

Seeing Where You Are

For every photographer who has ever said they need to travel somewhere to make better images, for every journalist who has driven to work with windows up and music playing, you must read this piece by Neeta Satam on how to see stories ethically. Next week, students in our Documentary Photojournalism course will head a little south for our 13th...

Categories At Work/Business & Industry/Craft/Ethics & Legal/Journalism/Photojournalism

March 6, 2018

A Narrow Slice if History

Hondros, a film about the late photojournalist Chris Hondros, is now open in select cities. Producer Greg Campbell, a friend of his, spoke with Christopher Booker for PBS News Hour. Because I think Chris knew very well that there were also not a lot of happy endings after he snapped the shutter on his camera. And I’ve heard him say...

Categories At Work/Business & Industry/Good Work/Journalism/Photojournalism

February 5, 2018

When Assisting Means Employed

David Walker at Photo District News has taken a look at several legal issues related to large-scale photo shoots, ones where “assistants” are routinely hired to help with the production. The common industry term “assistants” means something different in New York and California. Most of us think of assistants as independent contractors, paid a flat rate to work on a...

Categories At Work/Business & Industry/Journalism/Multimedia/Photojournalism/Video