Working in the Digital Age
Blog is the shortening of the term weblog that refers to an online journal or that is updated frequently either by one individual or multiple contributors. The first blog can date to 1994, which was created by Justin Hall known as Links.net. Although the term blog wouldn't be created until 3 years later by Jorn Barger who was created the Robot Wisdom blog. Blogs became a new way to document information and share it with a wide audience. The next year in 1998 we saw the first instance in which a blog containing traditional news, Jonathan Dube blogged Hurricane Bonnie for The Charlotte Observer. Blogs just continued to grow throughout the 2000's as it was stated in the article A Brief History of Blogging by WDD staff " in 1999 there were 23 blogs on the internet and by the middle of 2006 there were 50 million blogs". Blogs can be used to talk about any type of topic by anyone who is willing to start one, as well as they can be informal or formal. We saw a rise in political blogs as well in the beginning. In 2005 "statistics revealed that 32 million Americans read blogs, that was more than ten percent of the entire population", people started to make money blogging which caused a skyrocket in blog spaces and new bloggers to emerge. This marks the transition from journalism in newspapers and magazines to the internet. The internet created a quick, easy accessible, and free way to get this information unlike anything before it.
Blogging just like the internet is constantly changing and evolving, for instance traditional blogging was typically individuals work on a dedicated websites, which has been on the decline. We have seen an increase of blogging on other internet platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and as well as on professional sites such as the Huffington Post and Business Insider. Felix Salmon who wrote How blogs have changed journalism touches on the topic that larger news sites have become more "bloggier". As larger news sites shift more towards an online audience, we must start to inquiring how this will affect photojournalist. In the article written by Jared Keller called Photojournalism in the Age of New Media he looks at the advantages and disadvantages of the growing internet presence. Twitter and Facebook as well as other social media have created a flooding of images from both citizen and professional photojournalist. The increase of websites and blogs being posted allows for increase photos needed from these photojournalist but with such a flood of images it really comes down to the details of the photos. Keller talks about instances when there are events happening across the world for instance, there were events happening Benghazi, Libya but there had been no photos coming out of the area about the events via professional photojournalist. He goes to say how they " found a guy in Libya who had posted some pictures on the internet, tracked him down through his Facebook, made contact, asked questions about the situation, got permission to use the photos, and retained him for a few more days of work". In this instance it worked out that a guy with an iPhone with feet on the ground was able to get the pictures and verification of the images and events to the news before anyone else. The issue that follows with this is that verification of images from just any citizen photojournalist with a cellphone can fall into grey areas. Sometimes people re-post other images without credit, screenshot from someone else and potentially sell it as their own. Overall that can cause issues among the photojournalist community. There is also a difference between the photos taken on iPhone's versus professional high-quality images , "We want images that stand the test of time", "snapshots and photos taken by camera phones are not things we can come back to learn from and understand something deeper" stated by Nathalie Applewhite, managing director of the Pulitzer Center. People tend to forget that photojournalism is not just random snapshots of places and events and actions. As I had stated in my previous blog a statement from The Gordon Parks Foundation "the camera can be a weapon against poverty, racism, against all sorts of social wrongs" but this goes hand it hand that they could do opposite when the person behind the camera doesn't respect the profession in such way. They are moments in time that need professional and thoughtful content to document for generations. We must remember that photos often are taken with more truth than words and "images can be manipulated, and ultimately used by someone with a vested interest to frame things in a certain way".
Photo by Tim Gouw
Blogs compared to the pre-digital photographic technology of the Leica 35mm in which I researched and talked about in my blog post chapter 2 there are vast differences and surprising similarities. Blogs although still relatively new are a way of reaching getting information out to a ever growing population and internet audience. The Leica in its time around 1924 was used by photojournalist to capture images in order to get news out to their audience at the time which would have been by newspapers. Newspapers and Blogs are not that different in the aspect that they contain written documents by journalist on topics that interest the reader, they often are accompanied by photos taken by a photojournalist depicting the action of the article or showing the event that is being describes or talked about. Blogs allow both amateur and professional photojournalist to express and create blogs about any topic that interest them. As well as similarly to the Leica 35mm was designed for both "amateur and professional photographers to capture the world around us" The major differences are obviously that blogs are where the articles and pictures are published to, versus the Leica 35mm is a camera that would capture the photos to be used in a newspaper during its time. The Leica 35mm images captured up until later times would be published to newspapers within certain areas versus photos posted on blogs are available for anyone, anywhere, who has internet service.
The pre-digital technology of the Leica 35mm allowed for photojournalism to grow throughout the next decades and many of the basic concepts found in the camera are still scene and used in cameras today. They opened to door for both amateur and professional photojournalist to capture images that would document the world for the generations ahead and for history. Blogs have changed the field for photojournalist in both positive and negatives ways. For modern day photojournalist blogs create more jobs and opportunities for their photos to be published and used such as the Leica did for people back in the 20's. Although the internet has also complicated photojournalism as there is a flooding of images from people that could be used and sometimes picked over a professional photojournalist images because of convenience, time, and even cost of compensation. The convenience of blogs is beyond what could have been imagined the 20's, the Leica was compact and easy to travel with but you still needed other technology to develop the photos, select which was would be used and get them to the editor of the newspaper as for blogs we can take a photo via our camera it can be transferred via WiFi to your laptop and be posted on your blog within minutes of capturing it. This was drastic as it was stated in the article Photojournalist or Pack Mule that " years ago a requirement of photojournalist was to have a strong back as they would need to carry 80 pounds of equipment". These other amateur photojournalist may not provide images with the same quality, professional manner in reporting about the image such as it's validity and origin which can lead to stolen photos, or adulterated photos tainting the field.
Photo by Chris Duesing
Above is a photo taken by Chris Duesing in 2015 using a Leica 35mm camera, although it is not a photo from that era it still shows the amazing quality and detail that was possible to be captured with the technology from that era.
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