July 1, 2023 newsletter

Jul 2, 2023 | Industry News, ONPA News

#NEWS – It’s all local

What happened in the industry this month?

#ONPA MATTERS

1/ The Board still seeks to fill the position of secretary. Please reach out to me if interested:

#OTHER INDUSTRY MATTERS

1/ PetaPixel: ‘Abode’ is a New Suite of Creative Apps That Takes Aim at Adobe

“Multi-disciplinary British artist Stuart Semple has organized an ‘amazingly passionate team of geeks’ to attack ‘corporate overlords.’ In Semple’s view, that ‘overlord’ is Adobe, and the solution is Abode, a new Kickstarter project designed to build apps to compete against Adobe.’

Cheeky.

2/ LATimes:

  • A near-13% reduction in the workforce targets photo department; Kent Nishimura, DC bureau photographer is notified by email while on his honeymoonIn yet another shocking/not shocking blow to journalism – and by extension, democracy – corporate executives continue to exhibit seemingly depraved decision making by slashing workforce numbers in order to save on costs. Fallout and reaction of recent layoffs have been on prominent display across Twitter, mostly. His colleague, Jay, documented a lot of the talks.

     

    Search: #LATIMES, Kent Nishimura

 

3/ The Press Club of Cleveland: 2023 All Ohio Excellence in Journalism Awards Winners have been announced. View the complete list, here – you’ll likely recognize a few of the names. Congratulations to all!

4/ AI has transformed the ethics around deceptive images from a slippery slope into a trap door

5/ Freedom of the Press Foundation: Press freedom and civil liberties orgs condemn conviction of Asheville journalists

“We don’t have secret police in the United States,” said Seth Stern, Director of Advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF). “Officers are not entitled to operate without press and public scrutiny just because it’s dark out. The Constitution requires that journalists be given sufficient access to public land to report the news, no matter the time.”

6/ Advice from 2022 Regional POY MNCC winners

“What keeps you going as a photojournalist?

I’ve often said that as a photojournalist, you’re going to meet people on their best or worst days of their lives. I take that very personally.” – Julio Cortez, AP

7/ By now you’ve likely seen the video or photos on social media documenting the damage sustained to the lens of Florida freelance sports photographer, Jim Rassol during an MLB game. A GoFundMe has been created to help with replacement as he doesn’t carry insurance.

Folks, there’s really no excuse for not carrying business and gear insurance.

For $3-5/day, you can get your gear and business covered. There’s lots of solutions out there. At a bare minimum, you can add your gear onto an existing home or auto insurance policy, ofter referred to as a ‘marine rider’.

Here’s three top companies specializing in insurance for visual creatives:

#PEOPLE

1/ Sue Ogrocki has joined the Associated Press Cleveland bureau, according to Phil Long and other area photographers. According to her online resume, she has been a staff photographer with the AP based out of Oklahoma since 2002, and previously was a contract photographer for Reuters starting in 1990. Sue holds a Bachelor of Science with a specialty in photojournalism from Kent State University.

Attempts to reach Sue have gone unanswered.

2/ Jonathan Aguilar has been hired as a staff photographer at The Blade after Jeremy Wadsworth was promoted to fill Dave Zapatosky’s vacancy upon retirement. Jonathan is the former multimedia editor for @LaDePaulia, in Chicago, as well as a founding member of @NAHJ_Depaul. He is a DePaul University and Medill School of Journalism alumn.

3/ Chris Russel and Eric Albrecht recently took in a trip together in New York, experiencing the wildfire smoke from Canada, as well as the Avedon100 exhibit. You can see some nice picture from their trip over on Facebook.

4/ I’ve been on medical leave the last couple weeks after surgery.Recovery has been far worse than the symptoms endured that brought me to this point. I’ll be returning to cover Tuscarawas County starting tomorrow. Excited to get back to it.

5/ Photographer ‘entered another realm’ during flight with Blue Angels. ‘I thought I’d died.’

‘I didn’t see heaven or hell; I had entered another realm and I didn’t recognize it. I recall thinking there were things I wanted to do before dying,’ Doral Chenoweth

6/ Columbus Dispatch staff photographer and ONPA Treasurer, Barbara Perenic, is also recovering from surgery. We wish her the best in recovery. Get well, Barb! xoxo

7/ Joe Timmerman has moved to Texas, where he is now working as the summer photography fellow at the Texas Tribune. Way to go Joe!

8/ Marcus Yam is back in Ukraine documenting the war. Marcus is an LA Times correspondent, recent keynote speaker at the last ONPA Convention in Columbus, and an OU grad.

9/ Signal Ohio, a nonprofit news organization with a mission to produce local journalism in service of Ohio communities, announced today that it has hired Susan Kirkman Zake as editor-in-chief of Signal Akron.

10/ NYT: NatGeo layoffs.

Freelance is the way of life for most. Are you prepared?

#INSPIRATIONS and #RESOURCES

Helpful things

1/ Medium: We asked 5,000 people across the country what they want from local news. Here’s what we learned.

Here are nine themes we’ve identified in this work:

  1. People do want more local news — emphasis on local.
  2. People want a shared, trusted source of facts.
  3. People want the full story of their communities to be told.
  4. People want to know about decisions before they’re made, and they want decision makers to be accountable for outcomes.
  5. People want to see themselves in the news, and in the newsroom.
  6. People want journalists to ask their questions.
  7. People want information they can act on.
  8. People want the news to meet them where they are.
  9. People want newsrooms to play a role in connecting and convening communities.

2/ Pulitzer Prize winning Photographer, David Hume Kennerly, has a poignant post on his blog this month entitled, Robert F. Kennedy: The Man Who Changed My Life.

3/ I recently moved my Adobe Lightroom catalogue off an external HDD (spinning disk/moving parts) and onto a brand new external SSD (no moving parts), and the difference is like night and day. Traditionally, LR tends to be a bit of a memory and overall performance hog. I no longer wait for simple import/export tasks to complete – yay! Startup of the program is also lightning fast.

4/ Photographs across social media which caught my eye, in no particular order:

  • one
  • two

 

5/ Every now and again I see pleas from photographers calling on editors to stop sending them out to ‘make feel-good pictures of searing temperatures.’ We’ve all likely been there. There are countless people that suffer inside and out because of climate change. Here’s a helpful multilingual guide on Best Practices for Climate Journalism.

Pick visuals carefully

When selecting imagery for climate stories, be sure that the photography represents the realities of global warming and the story at hand. Stories about extreme heat, for example, are better illustrated by images of frazzled people at a cooling center than by ‘fun in the sun’ photos of beachgoers splashing in the waves.

6/ NYT: Lisl Steiner, Colorful Creator of Black-and-White Photographs, Dies at 95

7/ We celebrate the birthday this month of Arthur “Weegee” Felig, b. June 12, 1899

8/ Finally …

 

Share This