And 'a must start from the title of the conference: why photojournalism
2.0 The term Web 2.0 - in practice - is identified evolution of the Internet came about thanks to a series of programming technologies that have created Web sites - free - with features, ability, appearance, speed and ease of use very similar if not identical to traditional programs that we used to install and use on our computer. So there are now
of programs disguised as websites or websites that contain programs with which we can perform the usual tasks that until recently could only make content from our computer software. For example, there
are online services (sites) that allow you to write up texts and documents in the same manner of the most popular writing (in other words, similar to Word), there are sites or programs to store favorite Web pages or profits, there sites-are programs for managing files, programs, sites are more or less simple, for the construction of web pages, etc.. etc..
- the fact that the programs and documents produced by them are on line (and should not be to block the memory of our computers, but are on the web, the network),
- ease and freedom of access (for free!)
- the speed of production and storage of documents useful for us (according to our needs, including occupational)
- and - above all - the ease of sharing and then distribute these materials (I mean when I talk about sharing not only the opportunity to show them immediately to other users or colleagues, but also the opportunity to work with more hands and distribute them on other websites or blogs).
So the concept of Web 2.0 is well suited to current photojournalism, characterized - as we shall see - from ever-growing web presence, easy access, speed and ease of sharing and dissemination, and finally subject to the logic of advertising.
Hence the title of this conference
Entering the responsible: the work better than others exemplify this kind of photojournalism is what I henceforth call "audiovisual." I could use English words like "interactive features" or "audioslideshow" or "online photojournalism, but this Italian translation - for once - well captures and summarizes all the characteristics of the work we're going to talk.
Audiovisual, in vogue for some years, are an established reality of photojournalism contemporary photographic services are combined with audio clips recorded live (often by the same photographer, but not necessarily) and mounted so as to obtain a short movie to enjoy great rates online. Speaking more technically, are files in flash format or simple web pages or even video files: very light, easily exportable sites and easily downloaded by the visitor.
So the introduction of the audio (with interviews, witness statements, background noise, voice-overs) is the real news in this sector of journalism and photography here then explained the title of my speech "Photojournalism to listen, "which - I must be honest - I have taken and adapted from an article that appeared on Poynter.org titled" Photojournalism: the era of the ear "(the era of the ear, the era of listening") .
Look So one of these works: Kingsley's Crtossing : the six-month tour of 23 year-old Kingsley, a young Cameroonian who decided to leave his country, his family, his friends, to seek his fortune in Europe, six-month voyage from Cameroon to France (via Nigeria, Algeria, Morocco, Spain), documented at any time by the photographer Olivier Jobard of Sipa Press.
As you have seen the audio is integrated with the photos, it increases the value of information, everything is very efficient from a journalistic point of view, and also interesting to see and hear through the use of editing and graphics .
professional work, which is a good way to get information, to study, to tell stories and a great way for the current issues of interest to those who usually sits at bay.
With these products are combined with information and disclosure, all - sometimes, not always - to enhance the photographic image and restore its popularity that seemed lost. This is due to the ease of access, and use the network which by its nature can deal with issues that probably other media, especially television, struggling to bring (for logical if not softer editorial spread on economic or political needs). Furthermore, the audiovisual allows to deepen and enlarge the theme with a richness and quantity of material unthinkable for any other media (such a large number of images could not find space in a magazine, for example).
So: nice! All very nice! Interesting, rewarding!
There are a lot of these networked audiovisual photojournalistic, and some sites have taken the trouble to collect such Interactive Narratives (Prof. Vigal De) Photography Channel and others.
The Best of Photojournalism contests (organized by NPPA), National Magazine Awards (the American Society of Magazine Editors), Pictures of the Year International have set of categories reserved for photojournalism mutimediale (which are taken from many jobs that will show you), most recently - the same NPPA has organized a very popular and much sought workshop for the production of audiovisual photojournalistic in short, a success. A success - I repeat - is emerging.
But that's not all.
There are very logical and other reasons that have determined the success and development of audiovisual photojournalistic. To locate
be from some statistical analysis done on the readership or so-called index reading.
The readership is the set of readers of a certain head. Is measured and segmented by means of appropriate investigations carried out periodically by the specialized agencies and independent publishers. Not to be confused with the run (number of copies printed), nor with the spread (number of copies distributed). According to the readership will determine the cost per ad.
Research on readership index (reading) about the Italian newspapers are readily available on line web Audipress , where for example we can find among other things, also this interesting investigation into the source of origin of the copy . That is why I'm mentioning feedback on data reported by Sabadin episode in his book "The latest copy of the New York Times": the English boy, faithful readers of "La Vanguardia" - daily newspaper that she read and liked enough to write the drawing compliments - but he never spent one euro to buy it.
Similar, even more thoroughly investigated because the habits of readers and visitors to websites and versatility of their habits of readers, is the study by Scarborough Research [PDF] , 2006, according to which "the readership of newspapers increases due to readers online "(I found it thanks to Business & Blog of September 5, 2006).
sites of major American newspapers are seeing increasing their audience without the latter necessarily read the print edition.
for all 25 newspapers under study, there is a clear trend audience to consult the online version. The analysis also examines the characteristics of the reader of the news sites, it would - according to the study - mostly young, affluent, with a high level of education.
Equally interesting study done by McKinsey & Co [PDF available thanks to the blog Hagakure ], also in 2006, which says that, while investment in television advertising grew by 40%, there has been an abandonment of viewers by about 50%. This survey contains another interesting fact, that explains why this phenomenon:
" Young people are in front of the TV half the time they are adults and on-line for more than 600%. Those between 18 and 26 years are no longer in front of the video network (rather than as known) and prefer blogs, podcasts and online advertising. "
Advertising : this is obviously the key word. All of these studies, research, statistical surveys are done to find out where to take advertisers' money: and it appears that the money they are increasingly online, that is derived from advertising on websites.
the wake of what some business decisions very accurate and authoritative sites from: The Washington Post, in November 2006, appointed director of Liz Spayd washingtonpost.com and his inauguration of the newspaper editor Leonard Downie Jr says [via Cyberjournalist] of wanting to " increase the readership of the printed newspaper and site visitors " adds " through the development (increase) of editorial and commercial products on the website ," and began to invest in online editions of the newspaper at the expense of the printed there because there's more and more advertising revenue.
In this sense, two other significant events occur: • The
NYT decides to make freely available all sections of its website (after a period in which some of them were only available for a fee); •
and the same is going to do with Rupert Murdoch Wall Street Journal's website (the only newspaper site to be active through subscriptions)
this because obviously the advertising revenues in the coming years will exceed the revenue from subscriptions .
So
meet the print and digital editions of newspapers, we provide real-time news on the Web without waiting for the publication on paper and therefore we must find tools and products to attract visitors to the site. Why
seems, according to recent estimates, that a newspaper is to attract between 25 and 30 online readers to replace - in terms of advertising revenue - the loss of a single printed copy (this is a fact that I can not cite the source, but I read in the book Marco Pratellesi Corriere Magazine and I think we can trust).
Therefore, we must find ways to attract visitors to the site and - carefully - to make it stay, another big problem for publishers is to remain on site for visitors: over time they are on a page, the higher the chance to see ads targeted to them. As said David Klatell, vice director of the School of Journalism at Columbia University in a very interesting lecture to the Foundation CDS September 26, 2007, " is not difficult to attract people on a site, but it is very hard to keep her there .
and slideshows, but most of all Audiovisual they do, they do, they work. This is confirmed by Vivian Schiller, general manager of nytimes.com who recently said:
" Slideshows took off like a rocket, represented 10% of our page views in August. Our STRATEGY is to vacate (unleash) the creativity of our journalists to tell stories and build communities of users around to specific areas of interest. (source: MarketWatch.com of October 3, 2007, interview by Jon Friedman).
He understood that Le Monde has decided to give ample space to Territoires de Fictions
Territoires de fictions is the project of a group of 52 French photographers decided to redefine the language photojournalism in collaboration with designers, editors, audio and graphics professionals, in order to realize a French identity. From this collaboration came about a new product called "POM" (Petite or Small oeuvre multimédia Opera Multimedia). Mixing journalism, creativity, emotion and abstraction, POM, broadcast exclusively on LeMonde.fr during the presidential campaign, offers a variety of looks to France in 2007.
Zone Sensible is the chronicle of the French police in Paris suburbs (photo by Pierre-Olivier Labbe and Cell Pernot, editing by Richard Didier).
David Klatell (in the same conference at the Security Council Foundation) has gone beyond what has been said so far and has given indications, said: " What can successfully sell newspapers? The answer is, expertise, analysis. Ability to create a content of essays, this will be the primary form of everyday life. Why the latest news will be already known to the entire population. (...) It will be a daily narrative, a work of fiction that will make the newspaper. (.. .) I prefer to speak of explanation, contextualization when you have to understand the news, rather than giving a personal opinion, although a review staff can be interesting (...). It is the explanation and contextualisation that are important. "
Well, then we see a work that seems to go in the expected direction from Klatell: I find online Delaware thanks to an alert posted on Carlo Dalla Pasqua His blog Reporters .
Little People documents the lives of people suffering from dwarfism, Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, Wilmington, where geneticists are studying and orthopedic and trying to figure out the mystery of dysplasia more commonly known as skeletal dwarfism (photo Suchat Pederson).
recap:
1. players moving on the Internet (websites and blogs) and the accessory or surrogate (podcasts and mobile phones), and readers are interesting (young, educated and affluent)
2. advertising follows them), and advertisers migrate to the hunt on the net of this greedy prey
3. helping the publishers and advertisers increase their online presence with it because its revenue from advertising
4. as a result the websites are interested in providing editorial products that take on the pages of their Site visitors in order to show them more advertising
5. then the audiovisual and interactive content are a perfect tool to achieve this purpose, because they are embraced by the public and allow the newspaper to offer a product rich in expertise, analysis, narrative, explanation, context: a journalistic product that achieves a dual purpose: to make quality information and gain from advertising
Now three questions.
The first is almost a personal nature (although it may be shared by many) as a spectator, I can escape the publicity, maybe thanks to sites that are more interested in content than to ads that use audio-visual and aesthetic purposes or for journalistic or popular? The answer is yes, independent sites, producers of interactive publishing, there are (eg MediaStorm, which was the first audio-visual section which I have) or independent sites (like Brenda Kenneally from which we will see "Money and Respect "or as" Chiloe Stories ").
" Money and Respect" by Brenda Kenneally is working on a slum in New York where the spread of crack has created a community of people living with drug addiction in different ways (passing off, consumers, trying to get rid of). Says the author: " this work contains images of drug addiction, but it is a work on drugs. It 'work on the desire to have control over their destiny. The crack trade has created an economy in certain neighborhoods where other opportunities seem to be missing. "
The second question is obvious and it is this: what will happen to photographers? What does this movement for photographers?
Destined to use the audio as well as images, to spend much time in editing and assembling, to see distorted the dynamics of exclusivity with which they have in the past could also establish a value for their services. Who will will pay for this extra work? And they should or are paid for these new multimedia products, for this work of multimedia journalism that involves expenditure of energy, time, acquisition of new skills?
to these new needs respond well know publishing the so-called "staff photographer" U.S. (the newspaper photographers inside: the figure almost unknown to Italian editors) who have the means (provided by the publisher) 's obligation (the publishers want - as we have seen - these products) and also the need to develop new and creative services (such as Schiller said of the NYT, but also because - at some point - have found to have to invent ways to fight the overwhelming power of big photo agencies that threatened to take them out, making them inconvenient for daily newspapers). These photojournalists once again have control over the entire service: choose photos, choose the cuts of each image, choose the sequence, choose the presentation mode, choose the meaning and significance to this work through the entire service assembly and matching with the audio (a way to return to the photographers of the '60s that was put alongside the art director and decided the layout of his service).
Photographers especially those of the staff, like the medium, so as to come up with appropriate tools: Joe Weiss invented software that makes it easy to produce these products, this program is called Soundslides and in a few mouse clicks you can create an audiovisual presentation to be exported on a website.
But here we have what will happen? Have attended the attempts to change that led to the invention and dissemination of audiovisual photojournalistic? There is a demand and supply?
One solution is that the Italian newspapers should adopt staff photographers: This could be the occasion, the turning point, that the Italian publishing is consistent with good habits of foreign visitors.
Or it may be that photographers freelancers are responsible for carrying out investigations and photojournalistic reportage, since, according to the European Journalism Observatory citing articles in the Columbia Journalism Review: " the advent of the Internet is having a dual effect: readers and advertising tend to migrate on But some newspapers Network resist better than others. How? Although the empirical evidence is hard to get the impression, supported by some articles of note magazine Columbia Journalism Review, is that the public is willing to renew the subscription if the newspaper is lively, original and, above all, if it carries on its role as "watchdog" system. I mean that flatten or too complacent to show that political power would lose copies even operating under monopoly conditions. "
The audience does investigative journalism, it provides readers!
And then we'll see an example of these investigations, carried out by the Palm Beach Post, entitled" Train Jumping . "E 'a report on the attempt to reach the United States by citizens of Central America, Honduras and Guatemala who go to Mexico with the hope of being able to reach and then cross the American frontier: all illegally using local trains. An odyssey of 1500 miles to the first world. (photo by Gary Coronado)
Internet can be an instrument of great help to the newspapers, certainly is - as he said in his Klatell pluricitata as conference and wrote Sandro Gilioli more colorful but effective on his blog - of course is that "today communications professionals are a bit 'as like the famous Italian industrialotti Northeast: either learn to make excellent products, or are overwhelmed by exports of China. "
Photojournalism must be first of all journalism, quality of investigation. Dall'orticello must exit the photographers, who want to see how are good to create beautiful images, to increase our awareness of belonging to a team that works for the information and not just for photos. Should we allow someone to do this. So much more than making pretty pictures but is very much easier to do good information.
But let's not forget that all these fine words are hanging by a thread. What the connection to the Internet. Without that everything collapses, the fear of the blank page should give us pause.
As demonstrated by the recent events in Burma where the regime has almost uninterested in the control of the television instead to impose a blackout in the internet the entire country.
probably dictatorships, crude or sophisticated that is, totalitarian states and terrorism will always have less need for increasingly sophisticated weapons and the need for a pair of scissors or a sharp blade. Otherwise, information flows, and also more and more thanks to citizen journalists.
And here comes my third question: how to live with the information coming from citizen journalists? Information is often useful (see G8 in Genoa) and which now can not be ignored (for issues related to technological innovations that allow you to have tools for the production of journalistic material available to everyone, and needs the same editorial, that would be stupid not to use this resource and in fact use it all right).
E ' a question that I do not have a ready answer. But in this respect I propose a final audiovisual.
It is titled " In the wake of the coup " and said the atmosphere in the streets of Bangkok in the early hours of the military coup a year ago, when Thai Prime Minister (Shinawatra) stood at the site of NY ' UN and army troops and tanks to the orders of generals took to the streets of the country and institutional sites (called soft coup, because the deposed president was unpopular, and because there was no bloodshed). E 'operation Yahoo! News (journalist Ezra Palmer) who used only photos of Flickr users, citizens who have put into sharing their pictures at this famous photo-sharing site : Photojournalism 2.0 by definition.
Finally, I close the circle and back to Web 2.0 that I mentioned at the beginning of my speech: to prepare this speech, I only used tools belonging to Web 2.0. To be precise Furl , Trailfire , Google Reader , Box.net, Google Docs , Blogger so you can get anywhere at your fingertips the materials and documents necessary for its completion and to make them available on the web, with this blog.
Leonardo Brogden
