“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.