Page 115 - Convergent Journalism an Introduction Writing and Producing Across Media

Picture Editing for Different Media

was rapid, and by the beginning of the 21st century, most newspapers
had moved into digital photography.
Today’s journalists still term the equipment bulky, but compare
Roger Fenton’s wagonload of “state-of-the-art” equipment in 1855 to
the Dallas Morning News’ Cheryl Diaz Meyer’s equipment for her trip
to Afghanistan about 150 years later. She carried two Nikon D1 H
camera bodies, a 17–35-mm lens, a 60-mm lens, an 80–200-mm lens,
an electronic flash, eight camera batteries, two camera battery charg-
ers, 50 AA batteries, an AC power adapter, 15 memory cards, a laptop
computer, two laptop batteries, a DC power adapter, a power strip,
and a high-speed satellite video phone. All totaled, she carried about
100 pounds of photography and computer equipment and another
100 pounds of satellite telephone equipment.
Fenton brought back approximately 300 pictures from his four
months in the Crimea. They were offered for sale to the public six to
eight months after they were made. Meyer was able to transmit 15 or
more pictures a day. All were ready for newspaper publication the
day that they were made. She was also able to set up a high-speed
connection to the Internet to stay abreast of the news as it unfolded. 105
The technological advances in a century and a half would astound
the pioneers. Even with all of that change, the goal has remained the
same. Photojournalists want to tell the story the way that they saw it
and get it to their audience quickly and faithfully. The methods and
the tools have changed, but the ideal remains.

Picture Editing for Different Media

The roles of editor and photographer are interdependent. A good editor
improves good work and makes excellent material sparkle. To be most
successful, the collaboration must begin before a single picture is made.
Photographer, reporter, and editor should meet and discuss plans for
the story at the proposal stage. Planning is the key to successful projects.
The editor’s role is to challenge and to question the story: What’s this
story about? How are you going to tell the story? What have you left
out? Where are the redundancies?
The effective editor is the “gatekeeper” for the story and has the
keys to the information. A good story is tightly edited with a beginning,
middle, and end. It is constructed like a house of cards. If one of the
cards is removed, the house falls; if another is added, the weight of
redundancy also brings it down.