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Journals
by
Tom
Burton, Lynn French, Mark Hertzberg, Joe Jaszewski, Dick Kraus
with
contributions from
George Bridges
This has been a
history making week, and political sentiments aside, agreeing or disagreeing
with foreign affairs or domestic affairs, the role of the journalist
is to report and preserve history. The local photojournalist has a
unique spin to this role. When faced with important news, both locally
and nationally and internationally, what story will lead that day's
paper?
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Dick
Kraus
On Friday, as the Congress was debating whether
or not to include an opportunity for censure before taking the
impeachment vote on Saturday; and while bombs and missiles were
raining down on Baghdad, I was assigned to take photos of a businessman
addressing a breakfast meeting of Long Island business leaders.
After that, I had to travel 60 miles to take a
photo of a traffic circle in Sag Harbor that appeared in today's
paper. Before ending my workday, I was to take a photo of another
business leader for our Business page. But, that assignment fell
through because the Biz Desk had neglected to re-affirm that a
photographer would be there to take his photo and he was dressed
in a sport jacket, rather than a suit.
So, like many of my fellow photographers, around
the country, while history was being made in Washington and in
Iraq, I spend my day on the ordinary and mundane.
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©1998
Newsday
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As much as I enjoy the thrill of the chase on the “big” stories, I
also understand that there is more to my paper (and yours) than page
one through five, and those back pages must also be served. And that,
my friends, is the cold hard reality of this business. Yet, I wouldn’t
for one moment, think of working at anything else. Read
Dick's Journal
Mark
Hertzberg
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President Clinton pulled the trigger last Wednesday, unleashing
four days of aerial raids against Iraq, and we reacted by ordering
a half-dozen pizzas. That may sound like a callous reaction, but
you have to understand that pizza in our newsroom means there's
a big story abart, and none of us expects to be able to leave
for dinner, so dinner has to come to us.
We had already anticipated blowing out Thursday's front page
on a major local story...a terrible fatal accident Tuesday night...and
we had to change plans as the air strikes began. We cover few
accidents. This one was so unusual, and was such a tale of the
miracle of survival as well as being a story about death, that
it demanded a big "second-day follow," beyond our initial story
in Wednesday morning's paper. Read
Mark's Journal
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©1998
Racine Journal Times
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Tom
Burton
The annual photo department holiday party was over and a handful
of us were standing in the front room, sipping the last of the egg nog.
The television was set to CNN, showing the spooky green, night-vision
goggles view of downtown Baghdad. My boss casually tossed out a question
to the three of us standing there.
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"Who has a valid passport?"
My up-to-date passport was sitting in my camera bag about
15 feet away, but I was hesitant to jump before I knew what was
up. The breaking "opportunity," it turned out, was a
possible trip to Kuwait on a military transport. We would be accompanying
a National Guard unit and it would leave this weekend and stay
at least a week. There was one, possibly two, seats for media
but nothing was certain.
I won’t be one of those photographers, however. Fifteen years
ago I was very lucky to meet my wife Susan and we now have a wonderful
family of three children. I wasn’t going to miss this Christmas
with them for this story.
Now the Iraq story is big in our newspaper. The first day of
bombing took the entire front page, pushing inside the story of
Florida’s governor Lawton Chiles. But this story didn’t feel like
a great photo opportunity. It sounded like a lot of sitting around
in the middle of nowhere. Read
Tom's Iraq journal
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©1998
Orlando Sentinel
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George
Bridges Freelance, Washington, D.C.
Like most of the nation, we watched the resignation
of Bob Livingston and the impeachment votes on TV. But, we were just
16 blocks from the Capitol and a few yards away from the President.
After the Democrats staged their walk-out at the Capitol
and the vote was underway, the briefing room at the White House began
filling up with photographers moving from the Capitol and everyone
began jockeying for position close to the doors that lead to the South
Lawn. Shortly after three the press office began giving some details
to the meeting with the Democrats but no one was sure where it would
take place -- Rose Garden, South Lawn, South Portico. Finally the
press office called in the in-house pool to let us know what would
be taking place. We were placed first in line to set up positions
for the speech on the South Lawn. However, there was still plenty
of pushing and jostling among photographers and getting to the door
was difficult. After that. the rush to get a spot at the three different
shooting positions began. Read
George's Guest journal.
Lynn
French
"He defended the Constitution".
That is inscribed on the pedestal of President Andrew Johnson's statue
in front of the North Carolina State Capitol. Johnson was born in Raleigh.
None of the historical markers around the Capitol note Johnson's impeachment.
As I was shooting a story on Raleigh's native son, I wondered how history
will remember Bill Clinton.
Johnson had two basic forms of mass communication to deal with: the
newspaper and word of mouth. Could it be the few surviving view points
of the day have brought us to the few facts we can quickly recall about
Johnson: he was Lincoln's Vice President and he was impeached. Here
we stand 130 years later with newspapers, television, radio, the Internet
and word of mouth recording the President's every action. Will the proliferation
of media outlets allow history to be kinder to Bill Clinton due to more
surviving information? Let us hope at least it will be the truth.
As the cliche goes, "Only time will tell". In a few weeks the impeachment
will move off the front pages and the networks will quit interrupting
soap operas with special reports. History will begin to form it's version
of the Clinton impeachment that will outlive us all.
And then we can get back to the news. Read
Lynn's journal.
Joe
Jaszewski
In response to the Impeachment proceedings in Washington D.C., the
Sacramento Bee lead with that story on both December 20th and 21st.
However, the two newspapers were quite different in tone of coverage.
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On the 20th, the Bee ran a solemn picture of President Clinton,
with his head down, and wife Hillary behind him. The large headline
read "Clinton Impeached" with several articles on the front page
related to that story, the lead one being about the actual impeachment.
As the scene in Washington changed, so did the landscape of the
Bee's front cover. The next day, with news of Senate members wishing
to end the process quickly, the Bee ran a picture of the president
looking upbeat, walking hand-in-hand with his daughter, Chelsea.
The tone of the articles, photographs, and layout was much more
encouraging to Clinton's future in the White House, suggesting
that this probably wasn't the end of his presidency.
Meanwhile, the huge news this week has yet to show any impact
in my life and work. I continued to shoot the traditional Christmas
images: a Nativity scene, holiday shoppers, and a weather feature
after snow fell very low here in California's Central Valley.
Life goes on. Read
Joe's journal
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Tom
Burton
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Today our front page had a staff photo by Frank Rivera of National
Guard troops saying goodbye to their families as the they ship
out for Kuwait. The photos are a million times better than the
talking suits in terms of good photojournalism but they aren’t
historic.
Newspaper photography is about local news and recent surveys
show that is why people buy newspapers. They know that newspapers
are better at documenting their community than any other medium.
Tom Hubbard,
a recently retired photojournalism professor from Ohio State University,
has pointed out that in today’s world we all know what is going
on in Washington or Iraq because of television. But even though
we know everything about celebrities and scandals, we typically
don’t know much at all about our next door neighbors and that’s
where still photographers can do their best work.
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©1998
Orlando Sentinel
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This past week made me think even more about Tom’s perspective. And
Mark M. Hancock, who wrote on the Internet NPPA-L listserve in a still
photographers resolutions thread ;"I will change the life of one of
my readers. ... Then, I will change another." I’ll make a more modest
proposal. Let’s just show our readers their neighbors. It may not change
anything, but maybe first we have to stop and really see the people
around us. Maybe that’s the greatest service of photojournalism - to
help people really see each other. Read
Tom's impeachment journal
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