The future of photojournalism

I have serious doubts about the future health and welfare of photojournalism and the ability of photojournalists to be able to earn a living from their craft.

My fears stem from the journalism schools, from the current and potential employers of photographers, from the condition of the marketplace and the business practices of those who pay money for images, along with the actions of many of the photographers themselves. Together these factors all play a role in the ongoing demise of the profession.

Photojournalism schools yearly turn out flotillas of graduates, ignoring both the dwindling availability of full-time employment opportunities and the miserable salaries waiting for graduates in the few jobs that are available.

Regardless of the profession’s economic and market conditions, these schools continue to recruit newcomers and encourage students to fill classrooms. One of the reasons they do this is because most of the journalism schools are contained within a university, and each of the schools that collectively make up a university are self-funded primarily by tuition and enrollment. It’s similar to a division of a corporation being responsible for making enough revenue to offset its own expenses. The professor’s tenured salaries are paid for by filling classroom and graduation quotas.

The faculties are well aware that there aren’t enough jobs to go around for graduates, and that the few jobs that do exist are low paying opportunities. But the schools are in a Catch 22 situation: if they fail to turn out full graduating classes and to fill classrooms each semester, the funding won’t be there for salaries and programs next year. Yet meeting enrollment and graduation quotas only additionally floods the already-crowded marketplace, driving down even more the currently reduced value of the profession.

It’s a self-fulfilling downward spiral of circumstances, and the schools are apparently not doing anything obvious to break the cycle. Many professional schools, such as medical schools, don’t work this way. If there are too many graduates on the market too few available jobs, the schools decrease the number of incoming students accepted for the next year’s program. One has to wonder why photojournalism schools have not adopted the same practice?

"Internships" are another factor seriously hurting the profession. Many photography department managers openly look upon interns as "slave labor", getting as much work - if not more - out of an intern as is expected from the staff photographers, and at a fraction of the price, sans benefits.

The mentality that applies this work ethic to the short-term conditions of an internship is the same mentality that eventually becomes resentful toward the work practices and financial overhead of the long-term permanently employed staff photographer. Interns are unfairly placed in direct competition with existing and older staff photographers who have worked long and hard for their status and compensation level. While in reality it is a foot race between a amateur sprinter and an experienced marathon runner, it’s no longer viewed that way by management or from an economic and productivity standpoint.

Department heads preparing annual budgets are susceptible to pressure from upper management to think that they can spend less money and produce more by employing more interns, more freelancers, and by buying images one at a time from non-employees. This eventually leads to hiring fewer staff photographers.

Newspapers guarding the bottom line instead of their ethical boundaries have further devalued the craft of photojournalism by using cut-rate amateur freelancers and even photography hobbyists to shoot assignments, people who have never had any academic or journalistic training, instead of hiring professional full-time photographers who graduated from accredited college programs.

Why hire anyone as a staff photographer at a staff salary when scores of young and relatively inexperienced photographers daily prove that they are willing to work for less? From a business standpoint, why employ one person at a certain salary when for the same amount of money you can pay three people to do three times the amount of work, without the added expense of benefits and insurance? Experienced newspaper photojournalists are being run out of newsrooms, not necessarily by editors but by accountants and consultants. As the new saying goes, "Today’s freelancers were yesterday’s staffers, and today’s staffers are tomorrow’s freelancers."

One laughing director of photography at a regional newspaper chain in Northern California actually boasted to me recently "Why should I pay for photography when I can get students (from a near-by photojournalism college program) who will work for me up to four days a week for free?" There are two unspoken messages to take away from this quote: newspaper managers have learned that there will always be someone willing to work for less money, or even for free, who will replace you and your work, and that college professors who fully understand the situation are failing to discourage students from participating in this practice.

Journalism schools have been newspaper’s and magazine’s accomplices in this instance. Academic advisors and professors work to place undergraduate and graduate students into low-paying or free internships. The schools provide a labor pool of unemployed students who have been motivated to work harder, longer, and under distressed conditions without complaining, all in the hope of gaining a good future reference, of building a portfolio of images, and maybe having a shot at the next staff opening.

In return, large newspaper chains and wealthy editors and publishers (who are frequently alumni) donate large sums of grant and endowment money to scholarship and journalism programs. Schools are naturally hesitant to bite the hand that economically feeds them by placing guidelines or demands upon the labor and compensation terms of internships, or by complaining to newspaper editors about the miserly conditions of their student’s employment.

Have you ever heard of a business school professor encouraging students to work at IBM or Standard Oil Co. for the summer for free, just to get the experience? Do you think that if business school students actually worked at IBM or Standard Oil Co. for free, the management would suddenly see the light and view the student as a valuable commodity who overnight is now worth fifty thousand dollars per year in salary and benefits?

The misuse of internships for nearly free labor and the complicity of photojournalism schools in this business practice would be front page news if it took place in any industry other than journalism.

What’s really horrible about all this, aside from the fact that it contributes to the continued devaluation of photojournalism, is that it takes place during the critical opening years of a young photojournalist’s career. Before they’ve even gotten off to a healthy start, the graduate’s craft and the value of their college degree is significantly diminished. Their present and future compensation is already set on a lower track than compatriots in other aspects of the newsroom.

On top of this, corporations now want photographers to surrender all present and future rights to their images and potential residual income from future sales of the images in return for one single low payment at the time of purchase. "Work for hire" contracts have been forced on photographers who were given the choice of either signing the contract or not working for the employer, both now and in the future. The Associated Press spearheaded this effort in 1997 and 1998, developing a freelance "work for hire" contract that gave contributing photographers the singular choice of either signing the agreement and giving away all rights to their images, or never working for the AP again.

The other wire services were quick to follow suit. Now, some newspapers and magazines are trying to inflict the same conditions on existing photographer relationships. The issue of rights and ownership of intellectual property continues to erode in favor of the publishers, and to not make any gains in the favor of the photographers. Once corporations saw that this tactic worked on freelancers, they began applying it in-house as well. The failure of at least a generation of photojournalists to effectively fight this trend has given this school of thought a very harmful head start.

The loss of extended image rights got its foothold with the full development of the Internet and online world and CD-ROMs and alternative publication avenues where the buyers of images hoped to be able to repurpose existing material without having to pay for it again. Publishers want to pay photographers one single fee up front and to be able to use their images any place, at any time, and for any purpose, and in any other format or context, without having to pay residuals or republication fees, and without the administrative overhead expense of tracking copyrights and reuse.

The ability of a young photojournalist to build a lifetime body of work, while continuing to earn a decent livelihood and build a future residual value for his images, has been effectively hobbled by this business practice. Meanwhile the professional organizations who represent the interests of professional photographers have done little, if anything, to effectively fight the trend. As long as one lone photographer or student photographer is willing to shoot an assignment cheaper than his compatriots, and to give away all rights to the images in the process, business interests will have the upper hand and they know it. Photographers will quickly discover that they have failed to protect their right to earn a sufficient income.

A recent posting on the National Press Photographers Association public Internet discussion list from a working staff photojournalist reflects the current state of newspaper compensation. This photographer stated that he has been working full time as a staff photojournalist since finishing college more than eight years ago, and that he has been at the same newspaper for the last five years. It is a mid-size daily newspaper. His salary is still less than $25,000.00 per year. And that’s with nearly a decade of experience, and with five years seniority. That translates to $480.00 per week before taxes, or roughly $312.00 per week after taxes. Assuming that a newspaper photographer would ever actually work a 40 hour week, which would be a headline by itself should that ever occur, that’s a pretax salary of $12.00 per hour and a post-tax salary of $7.80 per hour. For working nights, weekends, and holidays, and often overtime without pay or compensation days off.

There are more photographers now than there is room for them on the sidelines. This is not an important game, or a playoff game, or a divisional rival game. This is just a regular season Sunday afternoon home game for the San Francisco 49ers hosting the Indianapolis Colts. By conservative estimates, and using "used" equipment average prices, I count much more than $20,000.00 worth of lenses, camera bodies and motor drives in the hands of just these few photographers. Who pays for all this equipment? The photographers? Their employers? Are these staff photographers or freelancers? (Photo by Donald R. Winslow)

The personal cost of having the necessary equipment to do the job continues to rise as well. More and more newspapers expect staff photographers to provide their own camera equipment and transportation. Freelancers, of course, must own all of their own equipment, and most likely also have to purchase scanners and computers in order to transmit images to clients. Have you priced a 400mm f3.5 Nikor lens lately? Or a new Nikon F5 camera body? According to the February 1999 Photo-Fax! Professional Consignment Service Internet posting of prices on USED equipment, a used 400mm f3.5 Nikor lens is $2,000.00. A used 600mm f4 Nikor lens is $4,000.00. A used 300mm f2 Nikor lens is $1,000.00. At B&H Camera in New York, a new Nikon F5 camera body is $2,200.00.

Is it realistic to expect someone just out of college who is making much, much less than $25,000.00 a year in salary to underwrite the purchase of this hardware? Photographers, who traditionally make less than reporters anyway, should also have to bear the burden of equipment expenses? Plus insurance? Along with a safe and dependable automobile? On top of paying off the student loans that were needed in order to finish off the devalued four-year college degree?

The manufacturers of photographic equipment have also contributed to the overall devaluation of photojournalism as an art-form and a craft. By spreading the marketing message that any brain-dead yutz fresh off the street can be a great sports photographer like Heinz Kluetmeier of Sports Illustrated, or a magical portrait photographer like Annie Liebowitz, just by merely purchasing the latest fully-automated product, the photographic industry has made millions selling hardware to the amateurs and hobbyists. Meanwhile, they have also subconsciously convinced editors and publishers that the craft of photojournalism can be achieved by anyone with access to a credit card, an airline ticket, and a one-hour photo lab.

When I hear photographers say they’re happy to be getting $35.00 for a spot news photograph submitted to a newspaper on speculation and published, with no expenses reimbursed and no future assignments or guarantees and no residual rights, I’m convinced that the future is less than bright for this profession. I can’t imagine how my family, a wife and three children, would react if I came home and told them the entire fruits of my efforts for the day was $35.00, pre-tax, and that there was no other work in sight until the next three-alarm fire happens to occur.

When I hear that a single entry-level job opening gets more than one or two hundred portfolios mailed in, calls, and resumes submitted, and that the nation’s photojournalism programs will be turning out one or two hundred more aspiring graduates in the coming Spring, I’m convinced that the future is less than bright for the profession of photojournalism.

When I hear that the National Press Photographers Association has for two years refused to get involved, even from an educational standpoint, on the "work for hire" issue using as an excuse an antiquated clause in its bylaws, rather than working to change those bylaws, I’m convinced that the future is less than bright for the profession of photojournalism.

When high school students write to me through this Web site asking advice on becoming photojournalists, more often than not I advise them to get a broad and general liberal arts education and to take one or two photography and journalism courses at the most. If they are a natural born and talented photojournalist, they will succeed despite the overwhelming odds and the hostile business environment.

But if instead they are merely average and are destined to become one of the hundreds, or thousands, of recent college graduates searching for any internship or entry-level position, or if I’m in a less-than-optimistic mood, I just tell them to forget it and to go to Business or Law school instead. I’m convinced the future is more bright for those two professions within the field of journalism than it is for the profession of photojournalism itself.

Working photojournalists (me on the far left, Pirates baseball cap) waiting for President Clinton to speak at a Memorial Service in the Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC, on Memorial Day, as seen through a Widelux panoramic camera. It's a holiday for everyone else in the country. For the White House press corps, it's just another day on Bill's Big Beautiful Bus of Bliss. Weekends, holidays, how many days in a row photographing the same person standing behind a podium, speaking? An audio event captured in still images. Pay scale? Guild wire service wages as a staff photographer for Reuters, top of the pay scale due to the number of years of experience in the field, at holiday double overtime pay with a weekend differential thrown in on top. Those were the old good old days of compensation. What's likely today? The same event is most likely staffed now with a freelance photographer working on a single day rate, with all rights to the images signed over to the employer under a "work for hire" contract. (Photo by Carolyn Russo, Smithsonian Air & Space Museum Staff Photographer)

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