On a recent visit to Rochester, as if on autopilot, my car steers me straight to the Post-Bulletin newspaper, or at least the site where it once stood on First Avenue Southeast. Although it’s been nearly ten years since I quit my job as a staff photographer at the paper, I am not prepared to see the empty, snow covered lot that was once a bustling newspaper building, complete with running presses and people coming and going. Stepping out of my car and bracing for the cold, I get a better look at the site and a quick snapshot with my phone as tears well up in my eyes. Even with the knowledge the newspaper is still in business — downsized, mostly online, and relocated across town — I still feel a great sense of loss looking at the empty lot. My feelings are about a lot more than the loss of a building. This vast empty lot represents the loss of a viable and important profession — journalism itself. A profession I fell in love with many years ago. A profession embattled through the years and now barely recognizable in these days of “fake news,” click-bait, the 24-hour news cycle, pundits, social media and of course, the ever important bottomline. This cold, snow covered lot and the state of journalism today are one and the same. And they both break my heart.
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The site of my former employer the Rochester Post-Bulletin newspaper. |
I fell into photojournalism quite by accident. I always had an interest in photography and after finishing my degree in biology, I happened upon a basic black and white class at a community college. While learning how to develop film and make prints in the darkroom, I marveled at the process of watching images appear before my eyes like magic. I wandered around Ann Arbor taking pictures of everything from close-ups of parking meters to giant dead stag beetles at the museum where I worked. Eventually, I found my favorite subject to photograph — people. Following a failed attempt to use my biology degree as a high school teacher, I had a quarter-life-crisis and landed a job at my hometown newspaper in the U.P. of Michigan — the Daily Mining Gazette. Working for the paper I further developed my love for photographing people and telling their stories with images. Whether I was shooting yet another high school basketball game or a fishing tournament — where I learned walleye is “the chocolate of fishes,” — I was in my element. Although having to listen to another high school pep band rendition of the ever so timeless Final Countdown made me cringe, the sheer variety of newspaper assignments and the people I met on the job had me hooked. This was the job for me.
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Early attempts at being artsy - stag beetle. |
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High contrast building because why not. |
Even back then, in the early aughts, the writing was on the wall for the newspaper industry, no pun intended. Newspapers were already struggling with readership and ultimately failing to successfully adapt to the age of the Internet. Despite all this, I followed my heart and not my head, and decided to go to graduate school for journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2003. It’s one of the country’s best journalism schools and although I certainly received a quality education, followed by a number of great internships, a long lasting career in journalism was not in the cards for myself and many of my classmates. My time at the Rochester Post-Bulletin — a mid-sized community newspaper — was a mere five years. In total, between that last job, graduate school, internships and my first job at the Daily Mining Gazette, I spent about twelve years as a working journalist. Not exactly a long career, but certainly personally impactful. Like so many former journalists, I long to go back to a profession that essentially doesn’t exist anymore. At this point, I’d probably have better luck finding a job as a blacksmith.
People make the most interesting photos.
Journalism falls into that category of important and noble professions that should offer better pay to attract and maintain quality professionals. It’s right up there with teaching in its importance to a functioning society and democracy. Teaching and journalism are often touted as more than just jobs, they’re vocations, the practitioners of which are typically passionate about their work. The love and passion associated with these jobs is somehow supposed to make up for crap pay and treatment their practitioners so often receive, even while public officials continue to sing their praises and speak of their importance. Like so many other underappreciated and underfunded areas of our society, the working conditions and expectations in these professions are unsustainable, magnified even more during a global pandemic. Dedication and passion can fuel a person for a while, but eventually burnout always wins. As more and more burnt out educators look to leave their profession, more and more newspapers across the country continue to shutter. According to the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism, at the end of 2019 the U.S. had 6,700 newspapers – down from almost 9,000 in 2004, or about 25%. Many communities are now forced to look elsewhere for their news and information, often leading to less than reliable sources, which ultimately helps fuel the spread of misinformation and disinformation.
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Snapshot of me on my last day of work in 2012 - inspired by the Breakfast Club. |
The Truth Needs An Ally
The decline of print is one of the many changes and challenges facing the media landscape over the last twenty years, the most notable being the rise of the Internet and its polarizing effect on political points of view. I recently picked up my old copy of The Truth Needs No Ally: Inside Photojournalism, by Howard Chapnick. Published in 1994, the book is the definitive guide to the importance of photojournalism throughout history, its best practices and advice to aspiring photojournalists. It is the book that made me want to become a photojournalist. Chapnick extols the overwhelming power of the still image and speaks of how despite the rise and dominance of video and t.v. news, the still image continues to hold the ability to change history. However, Chapnick could not predict the profound effects the Internet — only in its infancy in 1994 — would have on the power of photojournalism and ultimately the very definition of truth itself. Between the image fueled Internet, social media and the fact that everybody now walks around with a camera in their pocket, so much has changed since his book was published.
We are constantly bombarded with thousands of images, whether we’re glued to our smartphones, laptops or even old fashioned television. When I was in graduate school, courses in journalism ethics covered various scandals involving the manipulation of images using Photoshop to change their content. Although the phenomenon was fairly new and photographers and news agencies who participated in such practices were held accountable for their violations, gone were the days of the assumed verisimilitude of a still image. Viewers were now forced to put their trust in the integrity of the producers of images. Fast forward to today, and a highly polarized ultra bipartisan America where trust in government institutions, the media and each other has eroded to a point of being nearly non-existent, and the truth has become ever so elusive. Add to that the ease of manipulating not only still images but video, and the title of Chapnick’s brilliant book feels especially ironic, because now more than ever, the truth needs an ally.
When his book was published, Chapnick could not have imagined where we’d be today. Still, it’s interesting to read his viewpoints on the future of photojournalism, most of which were fairly optimistic. On the subject of photo manipulation, he points out that even before, “the advent of computerized equipment and the introduction of electronic still camera systems,” it was possible to alter photographs in the darkroom. He admits the relative ease to doctor images with new technologies could lead to, “a further dilution of the public’s acceptance of the photograph as a credible witness to events.” In the book’s epilogue, Photojournalism 2000 — A Look into the Future, Chapnick concludes, “By the year 2000, I expect we will have learned how to tame threatening technological innovations and the electronic imaging monsters. The demand for thinking photographers will still be there. No technology can replace the mind. No machine can heighten one’s vision. No electronic darkroom can compose as well as the mind’s eye. The same kind of photographers who have justifiably dominated photojournalism throughout its history will be equally well rewarded in tomorrow’s communications world.”
While there is still a clear distinction between seasoned, professional photojournalists and everyday people with cell phones, the larger and more important issue facing our society today is the role of truth in journalism itself and its effect on the very health of our democracy. We are well beyond simply dealing with the occasional manipulation of an image here or there. As responsible media consumers, it’s up to us to do the work required to vet out the truth, to be an ally to truth. But how? How do we become an ally to truth when we live in a world where people choose to believe what they want to believe without ever bothering to back anything up with facts?
Becoming An Ally
The key to becoming an ally to truth is media literacy. What is media literacy? The Center for Media Literacy, offers a comprehensive explanation of media literacy —
Media Literacy is a 21st century approach to education. It provides a framework to access, analyze, evaluate, create and participate with messages in a variety of forms — from print to video to the Internet. Media literacy builds an understanding of the role of media in society as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy.
Common Sense Media’s definition stresses the importance of understanding the intent behind messages with a focus on children as media consumers —
Media literacy is the ability to identify different types of media and understand the messages they're sending. Kids take in a huge amount of information from a wide array of sources, far beyond the traditional media (TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines) of most parents' youth. There are text messages, memes, viral videos, social media, video games, advertising, and more. But all media share one thing: Someone created it. And it was created for a reason. Understanding that reason is the basis of media literacy.
I am guilty of assuming average, everyday media consumers know some basics about the sources of their information and I admit the need to be more aware of the generational divide that exists in the way we, as a society, get our information and news. I grew up in a time when there were three major t.v. networks that were the main sources of national and world news — end of story. This time before cable news stations, the 24-hour news cycle, and the Internet was not without its problems, namely the power these sources had as gatekeepers to determine what news was considered important enough to cover while overlooking other “lesser” stories. However, these sources generally had the trust of the public and people believed, for the most part, that they were presenting the truth without hidden agendas. The public’s trust of the media has significantly decreased since the rise of the Internet as our main source of information, and this mistrust is one of the greatest obstacles we face in the preservation of our democracy.
Lucky for us, the very technology that threatens truth and democracy can be used as a tool to combat the spread of misinformation and disinformation, which leads to continued distrust of the media. There’s an abundance of great media literacy resources available online that can help us all become allies to the truth. Taking the time to use these resources to learn how to be more responsible media users is imperative if we hope to preserve our democracy as it teeters on the edge of disaster. I began writing about these resources and was quickly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information available and the best way to organize it all. As I found myself writing a never ending essay, I decided to break up my examination of media literacy resources and tools into installments — shorter essays that look at singular areas of media literacy. Stay tuned as I work on creating what I hope will be a comprehensive guide to help navigate the ever complex media landscape of 2022.
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