National Geographic's Magazine Photography Seminar Canceled

 

By Donald R. Winslow
© 2008 News Photographer magazine

WASHINGTON, DC (December 12, 2008) – The 2009 National Geographic Magazine Photography Seminar scheduled for Thursday January 8, 2009, has been canceled.

Director of photography David Griffin made the announcement today in an eMail to invited guests.

"It is with great regret that we are canceling this year's upcoming National Geographic Photographic Seminar," Griffin wrote.

"There are many factors influencing this tough decision, but overall the climate is not appropriate for such a gathering this year. We sincerely apologize for an undue burden this cancellation may cause you. We hope we will once again get together to celebrate great photography in January 2010."

Whether it's the economy – or possibly another of the "many factors" that Griffin alluded to – that led to the cancellation of this year's seminar, some photographers say that maybe it's just as well that the event was called off. January could have been an awkward time for the non-staff photographers and Geographic management to come face-to-face because of their ongoing contract negotiations.

The real reason the seminar was cancelled, a long-time National Geographic photographer told News Photographer magazine today, is that some of the regular contributing freelance photographers who are not satisfied with the proposed new contract and negotiations had threatened to boycott the seminar.

Several of the mainstay photographers, in telephone conversations with this photographer, told him that they were not going to participate in the January event and that in response Geographic had cancelled the program.

In today's eMail announcement Griffin's comment that the "overall climate is not appropriate" for a seminar this year at first seems to refer to the publishing world's economic circumstances, the photographer said, but it could actually be a reference to the "climate" that currently exists between the freelance photographers and National Geographic.

One photographer who's shot for the magazine on several assignments says that it's no surprise to him what Geographic wants from the new contract: more rights for less pay. A committee representing the photographers has met with Geographic editor-in-chief Chris Johns and photography director Griffin to negotiate new agreement, the photographer said.

And while National Geographic is a global magazine, the downturn in America's economy and magazine advertising sales losses are still having a big impact on the publication.

"What's been saving them [economically] all this time are the more than 20 international editions," one long-time National Geographic photographer said. "It's like franchising McDonald's, you know?"

It's also a hard time for contributing photographers to negotiate a favorable new contract with the magazine in this economic climate, another photojournalist told News Photographer magazine. Because the photographers' work often appears in so many of National Geographic's international editions, they believe that it devalues the photographs for future stock sales because their work has been so widely published, and that this should be a factor taken into considered in the photographers' compensation as the new Geographic photography contract is negotiated.

In November, about 20 National Geographic magazine employees were laid off, including some top managers and editors, as the magazine industry has been hard hit by the same decline in advertising revenue and credit crunch that's currently crippling newspapers in America.

Whether there are more cutbacks coming at National Geographic magazine in the coming months is not yet known, but a source close to National Geographic said that some of the planned reductions in the coming year include publishing fewer supplements.

Speakers who were scheduled to appear at this year's canceled National Geographic Photography Seminar were Mark Seliger, Robert Pledge, Gerd Ludwig, Stanley Green, and Julie Blackmon.

 

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