PORTLAND, OR (June 2, 2007) – The future of online photojournalism and how it is published on the Web will be determined by what happens with the next version of the Internet and revenue, the managing editor for multimedia for Washingtonpost.com and Newsweek Interactive said during an NPPA panel discussion about the Future Of Multimedia Photojournalism. The panel discussion wrapped up NPPA's Multimedia Immersion program this weekend in Portland.
"We're only a couple of years away from a completely different Web," Tom Kennedy said, basing his prediction on the current print experience and the current broadcast experience. "And what happens on the Web for newspaper publishers is going to be determined by the amount of revenue that comes in, and the profit margin."
Andrew deVigal from The New York Times said, "Success is not going to be measured by the number of hits or by the number of Web pages served. It's going to be determined by the amount of time a reader spends on the Web page, and that's where video and multimedia increases the opportunities." In theory, readers will spend more time on Web pages featuring photojournalism in multimedia presentations than they would on "flat" HTML pages that use still images interspersed with text stories. "Having a reader spend more time on a page gives the publisher more time to present more advertising," deVigal said. He's the multimedia editor for The New York Times, and a former multimedia instructor at San Francisco State University.
Brian Storm, president of MediaStorm, one of the other panelists speaking before the NPPA group, said, "Don't bet against technology either. Technology is going to continue to evolve." The evolution will play a major role in the presentation of photojournalism, and some publishers are now shooting their Web video in HD even though the delivery mechanism for it on the Web isn't there yet, but may soon be. "Look what Apple is already doing with Apple TV."
"Still photojournalists have been whining about video for years," Rich Beckman, a professor of multimedia design and production at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said with a degree of frustration and agitation. "Shut up and get over it and learn Final Cut Pro, and get back to journalism and storytelling."
The panel was moderated by Seth Gitner, multimedia editor for The Roanoke Times and Roanoke.com.
Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Carolyn Cole from the Los Angeles Times was one of the multimedia workshop students, and she showed her first multimedia efforts from the class ("Street Roots: Jamie's Journey") as part of her still photography keynote presentation. Cole told the audience that it doesn't mean she's going to start shooting her stories in video next week, but that she wants the skills to be just one more of the tools that are available to her as a visual journalist at the Los Angeles Times.
NPPA's Multimedia Immersion program, which concluded with the panel discussion, spent four days teaching traditional still photojournalists and editors the new audio, video, and editing skills required to do multimedia storytelling on the Web. Apple's Aperture, represented at the workshop by Bahram Foroughi from Apple, provided 40 selected seminar students with MacBook Pro laptop computers and Apple's photo imaging software Aperture along with Apple's multimedia software applications Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro. The Canon XHA1 and HV20 video cameras that students used to shoot their first stories were provided to the workshop by Canon's Consumer Imaging Group, represented at the session by Simon Kerr. The microphones were provided by Sennheiser, and the WS300 digital audio recorders were provided by Olympus.
Aperture and Canon were the major sponsors of the program, and additional sponsors included Soundslides, The Digital Journalist, Olympus, Nikon, Digital Railroad, and the National Press Photographers Association.
