If it doesn't work...we're screwed
Submitted by Michael Quan on Sat, 2007-03-24 03:40.
I attended a workshop put on the NPPA, the National Press Photographers Association,
(nppa.org) last month. It was great to see many of my old friends. It was through
one of these NPPA seminars, that I first learned about VR photography.
Sadly, it's a pretty grim situation for the newspaper and magazine photographers these days.
Newspaper circulations are in free-fall, ad revenues are getting hit hard,
and the poor photographers are trying to re-invent themselves as videographers,
essentially competing with television, but on shoe-string budgets.
As one of my cronies morbidly joked: "We're trying to shoot video for the newspaper
website. It's the new thing, but if it doesn't work, we're screwed."
Re: If it doesn't work...we're screwed
It is sad in many ways, perhaps even a bit scary as professional news reporting gets replaced by uTube type "reporting" by anyone on the scene. And in 20-30 years cheap video capture and delivery systems will be so common place and everywhere that most news video will probably be captured from an embedded system close by. 1984 by 2034?
But change is something we all have to face, think about it, how many newspapers do you subscribe to today? Any? If you answer 1 or more it means your probably over 40, or 50 years in age. The internet is our news source now for better or worse. Frontline did a wonderful story on this transition a bit ago. Well worth viewing, it seems Craigs list and other classified for sales sites are significantly to blame for the newspaper revenue decline.
Love live professional photo journalism, can we be free without it?
Regards,
Robert