“Good journalism is often expensive, and in an era of static subscriptions and sometimes unreliable ad revenues, few newsrooms enjoy budgets as large as in past years…” – Patterson / Wilkins :: Media Ethics
Somebody asked me the other day how Nachtwey could get a $100,000 grant from TED (see below post) and produce a 3.5 minute slideshow. The answer is above. I could see $100k going really quickly when travelling to multiple countries, shooting and scanning films and paying your studio crew to prep the images as well as producers to get the slideshow. The plethora of images we see everyday devalues them, but the truth is the good ones, and the important ones are often really expensive. Here’s to hoping Nachtwey’s project on TB inspires a wider availability of vaccinations. After reading books like Mountains Beyond Mountains I’ve been wondering when this topic would come to the forefront of photojournalism. It feels like one of the biggest news stories that no one realizes stateside these days…
I hope people take the time to realize and appreciate that good journalism really and truly is a pricey, and often even a money-losing endeavor.
2 Comments
I don’t disagree that good journalism can be expensive, but I think in this day and age it doesn’t need to be. I think for Nachtwey it was because he’s built himself up to that level. If we had the same eye, you and I could go to the same country, take the same images, scan the slides ourselves, prep the images ourselves, and produce the slideshow ourselves. All at a cost much less than $100k. I think it’s the different mindset of the older photogs vs newer. Photography isn’t cheap, but in this day and age (it seems to me) it should be cheaper. More people are one stop shops with assistants as necessary vs employing huge staffs.
Cal,
I agree with you to a point.
It could be done for less than 100k, but in reality I’m not sure how much less, and I bet you it wouldn’t be nearly the same.
I know from working at Nachtwey’s studio that it often take 1-3 days or more to tone one image. So let’s say we did that scanning ourself. We would have to pay ourselves a fair day rate to maintain a living. We also would have to pay for the scanner ($10,000) and the computer equipment to do this ($4-6,000). We need to pay rent to our home apartment at home, and hotels abroad while we are working on the project for about 5 months or more. So, 5 months of shooting plus probably at least a month (probably 2) in production. You are certainly losing quite a chunk to expenses alone. In addition to this you need to make an annual net gain, which, in this probably amounts to the modest rate of 80k/ yr or so, even give or take 20 grand it’s still not a great sum of money for what’s being done.
I agree that photography IS cheaper, that’s for sure. Editorial rates have been stagnant for years and assignments have been dwindling, pretty much because people accept less and less for their work. I just think that the GOOD photography is probably worth as much or more than ever these days, you just have to sift through a lot more shit to find it. Art photography prints are selling for unprecendented amounts these days, I think that says something.
Not all good journalism needs to be expensive, but it needs to be done right. Sometimes that is expensive. Cutting costs makes for shittier, fluffier and less educated stories that all of us have to deal with reading.
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