First things first. Digital photography has entirely replaced film and newspaper photos are now all edited to an extent to fit the ideal form and format. With those basic tricks in hand, editors can usually count on having an esthetic eye-catcher on their front page.

These ‘basic tricks’ can also lead to the publishing entirely fake pictures – knowingly or through manipulation, as happened in 2004 in The Daily Mirror with hoax pictures of British soldiers torturing Iraqis. Slicker manipulations can involve a ‘photo-montage’, displaying authentic
photos of ‘unnatural’ subjects. Admittedly though, most editors stop their edit after a mere embellishment.

This in itself contributes to satisfying the reader and encourages him to read on – maybe it even helps to sell the paper. Yet if we agree that pictures make the newspaper ‘look’ better, does it really improve  a newspaper’s fundamentals – that is, conveying accurate information in the most efficient manner?

In the past, photojournalism has been a vassal to the writing, an agreeable plus, which served to bring attention to, complement, or illustrate a story. Or fill in a blank column. Each published picture resulted from an acrid debate between the information-seeking editor and the graphically-motivated photographer.

It seems that recently the graphic quality, the visual attractiveness, has become more of a deciding factor in a picture’s inclusion. In a simplified view, this tends to have two effects: a more attractive paper and a worse paper (less content-oriented). While this may be somewhat true, it’s also based on a false opposition between story-telling and esthetics, between information and art.

The debate shouldn’t even exist, or at least should be reformulated: a good journalism photo should be that which looks best in order to bring out the information. Rather than pose a dialectic between words and images, content and form, one must realize the form’s final goal is to emphasize the content. And editors have been doing just that, to an extent, by including more graphically-rich pictures that still give a perspective on the story.

In 2003, the Los Angeles Times, a large referential newspaper, was rewarded for its photostory “Mortal Wounds: A Losing Battle at King / Drew,” which covered a tragic shooting and what ensued – the relatives’ trip to the mortuary. The story covered two pages with eight stunning black and white frames, which gave a complete narrative on the sequence of events. Elongated captions accompanied the pictures, but the role of graphics overwhelmed the words. In that particular case, the editor realized the information might be more efficiently presented through a photostory.

The online revolution now allows photos to occupy even more space, and to express information in new forms – slideshows or online collages and collections. Brian Storm, Vice President of news and editorial photography at Corbis, explains in an interview with the Online Journalism Review (OJR): “The medium is evolving quickly, and you’re not going to win mindshare by just walking out and making a picture with a two-line caption. There’s a real opportunity to present a compelling linear narrative experience on the Web. I don’t believe the single image will ever lose its impact. What I’m interested in is, once you’ve grabbed someone, where do you take them?”

Of course, some editors may have gone too far in their reliance on pictures. Others even totally missed the point about photos enhancing the information. This seems to be photojournalism’s main problem currently: it’s too often used to cover up lack of content with embellished tricks. Sometimes, like in this second page (below) from The London Paper, the editor didn’t even bother with tricks and simply bombards the reader with visual, highly-colored and just about contentless information.

Recent photojournalism has evolved to respond to the evolution of the readership’s interests and the marketing goals of the media. Take a look at the cover pages of most large publications worldwide: chances are a majority of the covers display a war-torn landscape or emotionally-charged portrait, sided with a generic picture of an illustrious figure (in any domain of public interest, political, sports or show-business). It has become a classic recipe, as basic as serving meatloaf sided with potatoes. Or a burger with fries. The type of photo menu you serve to a craving, rushed reader who expects his daily dosage of drama and artificial emotions through his news.

Why does it work? “Because shock overwhelms information every time,” said Jim Lewis, author, photojournalist, and writer for Slate. According to him, these recipe-like war pictures are devoid of information and the only helpful representation they give is that of the relationship between newspapers and readers.  “So what the photographs tell us, most clearly, is what the press thinks its audience can stand, and hence, how, in general, the war is going. On a literal level they show almost nothing of any value whatsoever, except perhaps that something gruesome happened.”

This trend doesn’t only concern photojournalism. In fact, societal changes and thus changes in journalism have affected pictures this way, not vice-versa. Consider the recent European Newspaper Award, in which three of the five winners published a tabloid-format paper. As you know, tabloids’ effectiveness is greatly based on a winning visual design and pictures, and this stands as a good example of how many editors use photography to sell form and mask (lack of) content.  

There lies the main problem with photojournalism’s developments. Instead of ameliorating a newspaper’s power to spread information, the now-relative accessibility and profusion of photos too often turns them merely into yet another tool for mass consumption and playing into social theatricality. "Because everyone is shooting digital, the pace at which we’re expected to turn things around is so great that I think it can hurt our journalism," Storm said to the OJR.

Now, of course there are (only) exceptions and trying to categorize journalism photography on its whole scale makes no sense in the first place. Too many papers, too many pictures, too many editors, too many regions and people and readerships and designs and tastes.
 
Still photojournalism follows general trends. And whilst material resources are allowing better and better pictures to be taken in all conditions, financial pressures and circulation quotas are also turning good newspaper pictures into mediocre elements of rhetoric.

The OJR touches upon this dilemma in its interview with Storm: “As technology evolves, Storm says, it changes how stories are presented and understood. New media is still going through its growing pains, but as you grapple with the new toolsets, you’ve got to remember to hang onto the principles of journalism.”

Graphics remain the most malleable, variable, and subjective content in a newspaper, and editors’ choices can be rightly opposed from one local paper to the next. Yet these editors mustn’t succumb to the temptation of easily-sellable pictures and should always remember their priority and mission as journalists: to efficiently bring accurate news to the public.

Sources: BBC – Online Journalism Review – Slate – eureferendum.com