Telling Stories in a New Media World
Long-form journalism, and photojournalism in particular, is something that has been greatly impacted by media changes over the past decade. Increasing print costs and decreasing readers have resulted in fewer in-depth stories in many print magazines and newspapers. The Internet offers hope for a renaissance in viewing this sort of content, but the potential of the Internet for this has not yet realized, as most photo essays combine messy interfaces with tiny images. Two recent developments, very different from each other, both offer possible new directions for journalism and photojournalism to go.
Newly created Dispatches magazine (yes, a real print magazine) looks very exciting. I expect its production values to be top-notch (I don’t yet have a copy, but it is premium priced), and it promises to allow for longer, in-depth articles and photo essays. The first issue is about America and the second Iraq. What is so exciting is the depth – the main photo essay in Volume 1 runs about 80 pages! Length without quality wouldn’t be enough, but from what I’ve seen so far, it looks top-notch. It is worth digging around their new website as there is quite a bit of on-line content as well.
Similar in spirit but much different in execution, Boston.com has a new free photo blog entitled The Big Picture. So far it looks to have photo essays on the order of 5-20 photographs, but it importantly makes them BIG. Finally, an online photography source that acknowledges that people have larger monitors and more bandwidth now. The editor explains the rationale and such here. I’m sure the quality will vary a bit since this blog is taking photographs from various feeds and wire services, but I’m excited about the possibilities.
- Jim Nickelson
