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Epilogue Climbing the career ladder in photojournalism is different than other professions. In most careers, the longer you work the more likely it will be that you get a bigger office, more money and personal assistants. For a news photographer, a fancy desk is the last thing we think about. The photojournalists who are at the top of the profession are most likely found wondering the back streets of a ghetto in a third-world country. The photographer probably has no place to sleep that night, hasn’t taken a bath in days and is wondering if he has the flu or a dreaded case of dengue fever. A fancy trip would mean living in hotel rooms for weeks on end and spending time in airports bargaining with clueless counter workers for the next flight out At a newspaper, photographers who spend a few years on the street are often given the chance to climb another ladder and become a photo editor or department manager. It means putting down the Nikons and taking a job that demands you act like a grown-up. For the past two months I’ve been there, moving from behind the viewfinder to behind the desk. My department manager left after 25 years with the paper to work in the university system. While the editors looked for a replacement, our assignment editor is taking over the manager’s duties and I have been pulled in to be assignment editor. In this job, I coordinate the schedules of 18 photographers and the photo requests from every division in the newsroom. It’s a job that requires constant juggling, a good sense of organization and a willingness to draw lines. I am accustomed to the juggling priorities because a news photographer is always facing the unexpected. “Fluid” is my favorite description of our working environment. You can’t be too dependent on routine. And I have no problem negotiating with editors to kill a bad assignment or to flush out the details that could help us discover a good one. And I’ve bristled a few feathers by ignoring the “ways things have always been.” But I’m not naturally organized and every day I forgot or overlook an assignment or request and it eats at me. I think I’m doing a decent job and I am accomplishing some headway in changing newsroom attitudes towards our department. The previous manager was not respected in the newsroom and I want the atmosphere to change when our new boss arrives the middle of June. Monty Cook is a design director for the Washington Post and we are hoping he can make out department more like the Post’s. Attitude will count for everything. As I’ve been doing the assignment editor job, I’ve learned a little bit about myself. I know I can enter a discussion with newsroom editors and in their language, I can argue for a certain approach to photography. I think by biggest accomplishments have been identifying the assignments that will pay off in great pictures and then freeing up a photographer the time to do them - even if it means I don’t have enough people to cover every request that comes through the desk. But I also know that my best skills are those of a journalist. I am a storyteller more than an administrator. The chance to have my own desk for the first time in 20 years has little appeal to me. Give me a laptop and that window office that corners - my car. I don’t know yet how I will be assigned in the department once Monty gets here. We are all planning on major changes. But I do hope that I can get the opportunity to continue climbing the career ladder - where ever that leads. Tom Burton |
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Tom
Burton
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Contributor
since 1998
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Behind
the Viewfinder - A Year in the Life of Photojournalism |
