The bleeding continues…

/ Keith Greenwood / Leave a comment

Yesterday, February 4, 2026, saw mass layoffs at The Washington Post. Hundreds of journalists working in different departments, including local news. The sports department closed. ALL the photojournalists let go. Some of the layoffs came as people were on assignment. Imagine working in a conflict zone for a news organization and learning that you’re no longer part of that organization.

The Post’s owner and the executive director want to focus on national news and politics, letting local news go. They see audiences shifting to other platforms to get their news. The problem is, what the former readers/consumers who are getting their news elsewhere are looking for is likely not what a local paper could be good at. Teaching journalism history I’m aware that the news industry changes and evolves. Newspapers in the colonies focused on news from elsewhere because people likely heard about what was going on around them through other channels. In the 20th century, or part of it anyway, community newspapers focused on local news because audiences had other means to get national news (like the evening network newscasts that people no longer prioritize watching). Now, for the potential readers in DC, the Post’s owner is taking them back to colonial times. No coverage of local sports – that desk is closed. Less local coverage. Less international coverage for that matter.

And no dedicated professionals to bring the visual evidence of what’s going on and who it affects. The Post has benefited from some great photojournalists, and still was. That vision is dark now. Sure, there are other sources for visual news. Post readers might not care that much whether the photographs of events from across the country or around the world come through a wire service or photo agency. But who is going to show them what’s happening in their own back yard. Yes, lots of Post subscribers (or now former subscribers) don’t live in the DC area, but neither do a lot of subscribers to The New York Times. That paper manages to cover national/international and New York news, and according to their reporting they added digital subscribers last year.

The point is that local news can be successful. People need a reason to buy a product. Take away the thing they can’t get most other places to focus on the things they can, and you’re likely going to see revenues fall. Take away the vision that they can’t get most other places and readers lose. It’s ironic that “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is the Post’s motto. Yesterday they pulled the curtains across the window for their readers.

It’s about connecting…

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One of the characteristics of long-term photo documentary projects is making connection with the people who are the focus of the story. You get to the “truth”* when you spend the time to get to know the people you’re photographing and they get to know you. Trust and rapport develop.

Those factors sometimes get overlooked in daily photojournalism. It can be easy to go to an event or respond to some situation, document what’s going on and move on to the next thing. Time is short compared to the number of assignments and expectations of the organization.

But there’s something to be said for an approach that involves connecting with community and building relationships. This article on F-stoppers is from a rural/small-town journalism perspective. As Robert Stevens notes, being a photojournalist in a small community means the members of that community get to know you. You’re recognized when you show up (or not) at events but also at the grocery story, gas station, etc. That can be challenging, as people may want to bend your ear for good or bad when they run into you, but it can be a benefit as well. Getting to know the community members means they recognize what you do. They can be more comfortable around you. You have the rapport that can more quickly lead to the “truthful”* moments that will resonate with viewers of the photographs.

This perspective can work with “big city” photojournalists too. It’s hard to know everyone in a large urban area. It’s easier to get to know people in a part of that community. Can you carve out a community around where you live or work or do business? Or some other part of town? Are there sections you can go to on a regular basis, starting to get to know people? Is that a way that publications that cover large metro areas can start to connect more locally?

There are obvious constraints within large organizations: too much area and too few staff. The industry is continuing to face challenges to maintaining, or even building, readership. Small staffs have to rely on stringers, in some cases. So is there a connection? Maybe this is an opportunity to think about how organizations structure their staffs and build expectations. If more connection can equal more rapport/trust, that can move the needle in a positive direction with respect to trust in the organization.

I freely recognize I’m not working in that space. I don’t have to do the things photojournalists do every day. But maybe the approaches that guide long-term work have more connection to daily/weekly work than we’ve thought. As Robert writes at the end of his post, “Don’t just aim your lens. Talk to people, listen to their stories, and be part of the room. When you get back to your usual work, you might find you see things differently.”

*Why is “truth” in quotes? I recognize that historically “pictures don’t lie,” but photographs are a slice of time, and what they show can be determined differently by different viewers. The best the photographer/photojournalist can do is try to present what was in front of the lens in a way that reflects the scene accurately – regardless of whether the viewer wants to agree with it.

Let’s get back into it

/ Keith Greenwood / Leave a comment

This site has been dormant for some time. Not that I didn’t have things to say about the world of photojournalism – just too many things that I made a higher priority. I’ve been thinking about resetting priorities for some time and moving this back to the top of the list.

Today’s the day. A lot has evolved since the last postings. There is a lot to talk about in the field of photojournalism. One thing that hasn’t changed is the perspective that led to the name of this blog – a persistent vision. Photojournalism, in its range of forms, plays a significant role in documenting history and informing a public. That’s been the case for most of the past 200 years, and it will continue to be the case.

So let’s start the discussion with this item I saw today: A photographer wanted to work on a project about life in Russia, but ran into some issues. Carl De Keyzer is part of the Magnum photography collective. He has photographed project in Russia/Soviet Union, India and the Belgian Congo, and he has photographed media stories about the Ukraine war. He says he wanted to work on a new project about Russia, but couldn’t go there to do it (COVID and the war keeping him away). What’s a photographer to do? In this case, De Keyzer turned to Artificial Intelligence AI tool and then had it create photographs for the book. The continued evolution of AI and its uses has generated discussion about the future of photography and photojournalism. In many cases the conversation has been critical, and rightly so, as the images contain flaws that reveal their origins. But the technology is getting better, and the work De Keyzer put into training the tool with his own photographs seems to have paid off. The samples on the web page reveal some very life-like photographs, though some close scrutiny can reveal some details that raise eyebrows regarding their origins as traditional photographs.

My take is that AI definitely represents a threat to the credibility of photojournalism and documentary photography – if it’s used in such a way as to present the work as reality. De Keyzer didn’t do that. He’s transparent about the fact that the work in the book is the creation of AI. In that sense it’s a work of fiction, and perhaps entertainment. As long as we’re going to be upfront about the work and how it was created, AI can offer some very interesting possibilities.

As long as we’re going to be upfront about the work and how it was created…….

You can read the article and view some of the photographs here:
https://petapixel.com/2025/03/10/magnum-photographer-carl-de-keyzer-couldnt-shoot-in-russia-so-he-controversially-used-ai-instead/

Put Library of Congress photographs in your Chrome background.

/ Keith Greenwood / Leave a comment

I love photographs (no surprise), and I love history. So the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division is an awesome place for me. I use the website a lot to find examples  to include with my History of Photojournalism class, but I also can spend hours just roaming through the collections. There are just so many things to look at.

And now I can have some of those images automatically appear in my Chrome browser. And so can you.

An intern at the Library of Congress took on a project to develop a Chrome browser extension that would “increase the awareness of and interaction with” images in the Library of Congress collection that have no known copyright restrictions. By installing the extension, every time you open a tab in Chrome you’ll see a randomly-selected photograph from that collection. If you click on the title at the bottom of the background image you’ll be taken to the Library of Congress website information for that photograph. It’s an easy way to see things in the collection you might not otherwise encounter.

Here’s an example from my browser after loading the extension:

You can read about the project and find a link to download the extension on the Library of Congress The Signal blog here: https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2018/08/free-to-use-and-reuse-pilot-browser-extension-supports-exploration-of-historical-images/

One thing to note is that the downloaded folder for the extension must remain in the same location on your computer for Chrome to find it. Otherwise it won’t load.

And congratulations to Kenyon College student Flynn Shannon, who developed the extension.

Here we go again….

/ Keith Greenwood / Leave a comment

We’re a visual society. It seems like every year new statistics come out about how many images we are exposed to on a daily basis and how many more photographs were made in the previous year than in all the preceding years put together. People respond to images, and they seek them out.

And yet photographers aren’t valued.

The latest case: The New York Daily News. Owned by Tronc, the Daily News staff was cut in half last week. The carnage included the elimination of the entire photography staff as well as two photo editors. Yep, the entire photography staff of the newspaper is gone. A 100% reduction.

Tronc isn’t the first owner to cut staff, and the Daily News isn’t the first paper to let all its photographers go. The Chicago Sun-Times famously did it a few years back before rehiring some visual journalists. Other papers have eliminated their photographers as well. It seems a little more galling in that the paper was first founded as the Illustrated Daily News. It’s slogan below the name for years was “New York’s Picture Newspaper,” and a camera has been in the logo of the paper since it was founded. It’s still on today’s edition.

The rationales have included having reporters take pictures with their smartphones, relying more on agency/wire photographs and publishing pictures from the public. Those rationales overlook a few key points. Agency/wire photographs aren’t necessarily locally oriented, which is the reason a lot of readers turn to their local paper. And while reporters and citizens can be in the right place at the right time, pointing a camera or phone and clicking at something (as we’ve done since the introduction of the Kodak) isn’t the same as recognizing the moment that visually relays the story and uses the tools and grammar of photography to highlight the important elements.

Photographs can make an impact on readers, and local photographs matter. The industry continues to face challenges, but newspapers are also important sources of local information for their readers. Good visuals should be part of that information. Getting rid of the people skilled in making them shouldn’t be the path to success.

50 years

/ Keith Greenwood / Leave a comment

Yesterday, Feb. 1, was the 50th anniversary of an event that was captured in one of the most prominent enduring images of the Vietnam War. On Feb. 1, 1968, Eddie Adams caught the moment that S. Vietnamese brigadier general Loan executed a suspected North Vietnamese infiltrator in the street in Saigon.

Plenty of people have written about the image, the circumstances around it and its place in history. I don’t need to repeat their work. It’s worth a revisit though because of the place this photograph has, the weight it’s perceived to have had and the thoughts of the photographer who made the image (and won a Pulitzer because of it.) Adams said two people died at the moment of the picture. The prisoner’s death is obvious. Adams referred to the impact the image had on Loan as well. It changed his life.

Some articles about the photograph:

https://apnews.com/63cb7a881716452091e837a34b277ea8

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42864421?SThisFB

What makes a good picture? I suppose it depends.

/ Keith Greenwood / Leave a comment

It’s a question lots of people grapple with. What makes a good picture? (Or what makes a picture good?). Like the headline says, I suppose the answer depends. On what? Well, purpose and perspective. What makes a picture of my family doing something goofy might be “good” to me because of the memory I associate with it. To you it’s cropped goofy, composition is wrong and light is abhorrent. It’s pretty subjective.

There are categories of photography where the determination is a little more objective. News photography (the field I focus on) fits that bill. Photographs are made, selected and published with the goal of communicating to a large audience. But what makes a few pictures among those stand out? Still an open question. Lots of research has been done on things like novelty. Barthes wrote about studium and punctum. And photographs that are expected to “speak” to a broad audience still speak more loudly to some people than others. That’s where it becomes subjective again.

I’m privileged to be based at the home of the Pictures of the Year International competition. Every year panels of judges come here and evaluate thousands of photographs, selecting the few that will receive awards. Judging just wrapped up for this year. One of the judges, Alex Garcia, has written his reflections on the experience and his answer to that question: What makes for compelling images?

Give it a read.

A different perspective

/ Keith Greenwood / Leave a comment

The last entry was about a column in the New York Times Lens blog. Longtime editor Donald Winslow had a somewhat troubling perspective on the state of photojournalism as a field and the outlook for its future.

Another photographer followed up with a different perspective. Leslie Davis is a young photographer/videographer for the Times. There are multiple perspectives that can be taken with most topics, and this one is no exception. In the followup entry on the Lens blog, Davis finds reason for optimism in the tools and opportunities that are available for photojournalism. She doesn’t dispute that rates for freelancers often are low and there are fewer staff jobs or editorial assignments. But within that environment Davis sees opportunities. Technology has progressed to the point where most people have a high-resultion image/audio capture device in their pockets. The internet and social media offer more opportunities for distributing work. The “unfiltered” nature of those channels means photographers can present the edit they think best tells the story, in contrast to days when the editors decided the focus of the story and the layout.

The two perspectives are a good reminder that there are challenges in the field. Like the rest of journalism, photojournalism is evolving. It’s been doing that for a century or more. With evolution come challenges, but also opportunities. How we respond to the challenges and what we make of the opportunities influences how the field will evolve.

Here’s another link to Davis’ perspective on the Lens blog.