Clifford’s article compares the worlds of Matt Eich, a talented young photojournalist living in Norfolk, Va with D. Sharon Pruitt, an advanced amateur living on Hill Air Force Base in Utah.  To make an adequate living, Eich is having to do supplement his magazine projects with advertising and art.   As an extension of an interest in photography developed on a Hawaii vacation, Pruitt now regularly supplies images for licensing by Getty Images via Flickr.  Her work exists as part of an ever-increasing pool of worldwide amateur photography that is now much larger than the output by professionals.

Eich was one of my students last year at the Joop Swart Masterclass sponsored by World Press Photo in Amsterdam.  He and fellow students had several impassioned conversations with the faculty about the future of professional photography, particularly photojournalism, in light of declining options in print.  Their fears about the future are the subtext in Clifford’s article.

As Clifford’s article puts it:

“Mr. Eich and Ms. Pruitt illustrate the huge shake-up in photography during the last decade. Amateurs, happy to accept small checks for snapshots of children and sunsets, have increasing opportunities to make money on photos but are underpricing professional photographers and leaving them with limited career options. Professionals are also being hurt because magazines and newspapers are cutting pages or shutting altogether.”

As evidence of the decline in print publishing opportunities, Clifford cites statistics from two sources.   Publishers Information Bureau, tracking availability of ad pages in magazines, showed a decline of 41percent in the period 2000-2009 from 286,932 down to 169,182.  The decline in ad pages has meant a corresponding shrinkage in the editorial space, leaving less room devoted to publishing photographs.

Mediafinder.com, a website that tracks publications, showed that 428 magazines closed in 2009 alone, according to Clifford’s research.

The decline in advertising revenue, impacting newspapers and magazines alike, has meant a lot less revenue available for editorial content creation and that in turn has impacted the likelihood of photographic assignments available for professional photography.  Instead, publications faced with shrinking editorial budgets have been tempted to turn to the licensing of amateur work at much lower prices.

The long-term prospects for professional photography are now in question as a by-product of the economic turmoil roiling media companies.  For professionals trying to support families and meet life needs, the current landscape seems to be imposing significant challenges. For example, how does one separate one’s work from the ocean of amateur photography that is increasingly improving in quality thanks to technology and training afforded by web-based instruction?  The economics of scarcity no longer work well for publishers or individual professional photographers alike.  Instead, the world is increasingly awash in images being created by amateurs who are documenting things of interest for pleasure.  Many are reaping the benefits of additional income from licensing as a happy by-product of their enthusiasm. Photo agencies, recognizing the financial realities of the moment, are benefitting from this income stream, but perhaps to the detriment of the professionals they also serve.

While media companies may be tempted to opt for the low-cost solutions, there are those who are raising questions about whether the demise of professionally-produced visual journalism is really in the world’s interest.  From the perspective of the audience, Clifford quotes Katrin Eismann, chairwoman of the Masters in Digital Photography Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, near the end of her Times article.

“The important thing that a photojournalist does is they know how to tell the story — they know they’re not there to skew, interpret or bias,” said Katrin Eismann, chairwoman of the Masters in Digital Photography program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. “A photographer can go to a rally or demonstration, and they can make it look as though 10 people showed up, or 1,000 people showed up, and that’s a big difference. I’m not sure I’m going to trust an amateur to understand how important that visual communication is.”

“Can an amateur take a picture as good as a professional? Sure,” Ms. Eismann said. “Can they do it on demand? Can they do it again? Can they do it over and over? Can they do it when a scene isn’t that interesting?”

Ms. Eismann’s assessment would seem to imply that professional visual journalists’ work still has benefits to the audience that only they can deliver.  Is that view of the landscape for visual journalism shared by the audiences for such work?

There are at least two other questions for professionals to ponder in response to this article.  How can professional photographers create enough value for the audience with their work to enable a sustainable livelihood?  Is that question fundamentally different today than in the mid-20th century?

In the latter capacity, I had the opportunity to attend the We Media 2010 conference while on campus in Coral Gables, Fla.  Among a group of stellar presenters, I was particularly impressed by Tom Stites, creator of the Banyan Project, and the winner of the 2010 We Media Game Changer Award.  This award “honors people, projects, ideas, and organizations leading change and inspiring a better world through media.”

Stites, a former reporter and editor at the Chicago Tribune, has been working with colleagues such as University of Massachusetts journalism professor Ralph Whitehead, Arizona State professor Dan Gilmor – Director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, and American University’s Center for Public Integrity director Charles Lewis to create solutions to the primary problems he sees affecting newspaper journalism.  In particular, Stites is concerned about the state of contemporary newspapers and their ability to support democracy.  He holds the view the future-of-journalism debate is dangerously narrow and binary presently and that the framing needs to be changed so improvements can be made to strengthen American democracy.

In his talk accepting the award, Stites said that the Banyan Project is an effort to create a new form of “Relationship Journalism” to do the following things:

• Serve the ill-served.
• Fuel deeper civic engagement.
• Create rich feedback loops to editors, while enabling readers to be co-creators of the journalism.
• Create journalism that serves the public on the deepest level.

At this point, Stites is continuing to work with colleagues to frame the possibilities for the Banyan Project by trying to set up pilot sites in three different parts of the country.  He is envisioning a turn-key franchise model that has a cooperative as the ownership model for the media organization being created. The journalism would be created for a digital platform staffed by a combination of professional journalists and editors supported by citizen volunteers who would be trained to do the work of journalists.  The professional journalists would be hired by co-op boards and they would be responsible as gatekeepers, acting on behalf of the readers who would also be owners.

This is an intriguing concept because it clearly would give the public “a stake in the game” and might more nimbly shape the journalistic agenda in a way that ensures the community’s primary concerns are being addressed.  Stites hopes to develop new software capabilities in the content management system  used to manage the journalism produced for his project.  It would use to enable the journalists to also discern unmet coverage needs being pointed to by reader responses.

As a mantra, Stites is saying Banyan-style journalism “must serve underserved citizens, being respectful of their lives and worthy of their trust.”  This mission statement resonates much more powerfully for me than one premised on the notion of “by the elites, about the elites, and for the elites”, a currently popular approach being used many places to ensure adequate revenue returns from existing advertising-driven models of journalism financing.

I share Stites’ concerns about the need to focus journalism more acutely on meeting the needs of two-thirds of the country’s population who feel disconnected from mainstream media’s focus on a daily basis.  In his talk, Stites cited the lack of trust for journalism reflected in the 2009 annual Gallup survey of confidence in U.S. institutions. This poll indicated only 25% of respondents had a “great deal of confidence ” or “quite a lot of confidence” in newspapers and only 23% offered a similar assessment for broadcast news.  Both are down by half from their highest Gallup confidence levels.  For those in the media business these numbers are not good news, but they don’t surprise me.

Adding to the challenges of the moment are the polluting aspects of shrill pundits on the right and left who are increasingly crowding out voices seeking to shed light on topics of civic discourse, rather than simply amping up the noise as a means of generating heat.  Again, I believe the toxic effects of punditry can be seen in the public responses to the healthcare debate and these are not good signs either.

In considering alternatives, Stites sees the Banyan Project as an experiment to stretch the boundaries of journalism and broaden its horizons to improve society.

In many respects, the current media landscape reminds me of the unresolved contradictions in the views of media’s role as espoused by Walter Lippman and John Dewey.  At the risk of greatly oversimplifying both men’s positions, Lippman saw journalism as a tool that would help the elites of society more effectively govern society, while Dewey saw journalism as means to educate the masses about the possibilities of democracy as the best method to advance society.  Both positions can be seen in contemporary methods being used by media companies seeking to maintain relevance with mass audiences while also preserving profits.

Stites’ view of the contemporary media landscape seems to put him firmly in the Dewey camp.  He aspires to have the Banyan Project take root as an early 21st century experiment as a means of extending the possibilities of investigative journalism focused on areas truly meaningful to a community.  He also sees the approach as a means to re-engage disaffected or underserved citizens, as a means to neutralize the political propaganda that passes for news and comment presently, and to recruit community contributors, all in the name of building civic adhesion and finding a way to permanently cement effective alliances between professional journalists and bloggers; the former needing jobs and the latter income too in the current landscape.

The method could also enable experimentation with the role of gatekeepers and help with exploration of the business model terrain.  To that end, Stites envisions the co-op model being built by a large number of small payments contributed by community members buying shares via tiny payments.  That core source of funding could be augmented by advertising, philanthropy, crowd funding of specific projects, and perhaps even syndication fees for specific forms of content.

While agreeing with Stites about the crucial need for this kind of re-invigoration of journalism, I also think his approach matters to visual journalists who have found their roles so constricted of late within media companies.  The diminution in possibilities to create rich multimedia stories to inform the public has been created by the pressure to return profits using business methods so adversely affected by advertising revenue declines.

I think visual journalists need to same opportunity to reinvent their work and to apply it to projects that serve community needs.  I remain very bullish about the possibilities for visual storytelling within the new worlds of digital media.  I hope the Banyan Project can find room for visual journalists under its big canopy and that the reinvention process will be nourished by its effort to put down roots.  As Stites said at We Media we need to think about what Web journalism would be like when it is fully realized.  We’re not even close yet.

Ali’s work reflected his consciousness of the role of the photojournalist as a historian and chronicler of the voices and lives of ordinary people. During the class, he showed work that was part of a long-term project to understand the consequences of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 through the hopes and dreams of to ordinary Iranian citizens who participated and dedicated their lives to the revolution’s goals and ideology.

Iranian photographer Ali Akbar Shirjian records a Masterclass session to show later to fellow Iranian photographers.

Working in such an honest way inside a political system that may not want such specific truths revealed requires courage.  We were struck by the purity of his intentions and the love he was showing for his countrymen in his own aspiration to tell effectively their stories.

Other students in the class also are producing powerful personal work on subjects that are of great personal interest and in doing so forming visual sensibilities and identities that do vary from the prevailing visual journalism orthodoxies of the past quarter century.

Our master photographers each offered inspiring examples in their own work of the fruits to be found from working in this way.  All spoke eloquently about the need to put one’s artistic ego in check and to focus primarily on the obligations to one’s subjects and telling their stories in a way that is truthful and clear to any potential audience.

Philip Blenkinsop made it clear that doing the work and finding a way to get to the heart of his subject’s lives is far more important than making a living through regular publication in media outlets, particularly if publication means that one’s vision of a story is going to be profoundly compromised.

Joop Swart master photographers Giorgina Fiorio, left, and Maggie Steber listen to student comments during a class discussion.

That same purity of intentionality came through loud and clear in the talks offered by Giorgia Fiorio and Maggie Steber.  Both showed highly personal work that was emblematic of larger truths about the human condition – work that required immense dedication, persistence and the ability to push through any barriers that a certain kind of self-consciousness might impose when one had to photograph in emotionally charged or emotionally uncomfortable situations.  In Maggie’s case, she was photographing the highly personal story of her mother’s last few years of life.  In Giorgina’s case, she was photographing the hidden worlds of men in roles that normally would not be accessible to a female photographer.

Giorgina talked about her photography as a kind of “confrontation” meant in two senses; confronting one’s own curiosity and passion for a subject as well as confronting the barriers that might be in place that would block one in a more literal physical way from being able to photograph those subjects of interest.  Both stressed the need to have certainty about one’s own intentionality as a means of acquiring the courage to persevere in the face of physical or emotional challenges.  I was struck by the clarity and relevance of their message as well as the power of the work they showed as examples of their approach.

United in our passion for visual journalism and a desire to continue to develop our own talents, we also reflected an interesting mix of skills, cultural perspectives, and differences in the way we approached the creative process.

Joop Swart Masterclass 2009 students listen as their colleague Simona Ghizzoni, second from right, poses a question.

From the outset, it was clear we each had a keen awareness of the uniqueness of this moment in time for photojournalism and documentary photography.  Much of the conversation focused on fears and concerns created by the ongoing implosion of mainstream media companies and the accompanying shifts in photo imaging technology being created by the technology revolution of the early 21st century.

My own views about the power and benefits of multimedia fusions of still photography with audio and video were challenged by others who claimed that film, print media, and gallery walls still afforded more creative control over content messages and superior aesthetics to that offered by digital media. While I see multimedia fusions as opening the possibilities for deeper, more complex story narratives, some of my fellow masters saw the fusions as degradations of the intentionality of still photography when practiced by highly skilled professionals.

In part, their displeasure with the aesthetics of digital photography represented a concern over the fact that digital cameras “make decisions” about the shape of an image’s color palette and lighting that may be removed from the direct instant control of the photographer.  Additionally, some of the photographers expressed dismay about the highly-templated approach of image presentation in digital formats like websites, pointing to the “click and move” sequencing of images that characterize so many slideshows and image groupings.   They saw the groupings offered in print and on gallery walls as affording more opportunity to shape eye flow and place emphasis on specific images within a sequence, thereby perhaps deepening and clarifying the content message of the photography in a more profound way.

Gihan Tubbeh describes her working methods for an on-going personal project focusing on night scenes in Lima, Peru.

In addition to a premise that most mainstream media websites favor continuous expression of unfolding “latest news” over content that supplies context to world events, I also think the photographers were expressing fear of a loss of control due to the fact that presentations in the digital world require the support of a collaboration team in much the same way that films are made.  It is essential in the digital world that strong photography be supported by designers and programmers who can translate the aesthetic vision into a language of code that actually makes the design presentation work in the digital space.  That kind of collaboration requirement places the still photographer in a role much like the director in filmmaking.  He or she may have a coherent vision for presentation, but they will need to depend on the skills of others to help translate the vision so it works in the digital environment.  That places new demands on the photographer and ends the idea of “going it alone” as the best way to ensure absolute fidelity in the execution of creative vision.

While I think print too has placed such demands for collaboration on the individual photographer when he or she works inside a mainstream media organization, it was clear to me that some of my fellow masters had found ways to often work successfully outside such parameters.  They had developed significant  photographic projects without being subjected to the pressures within a media company that force inevitable compromising of creative vision as a natural occurrence.

U.S. student Matt Eich describes his interpretation of the Masterclass assignment theme "Touch" as Philip Blenkinsop records the conversation as a video with a Nikon D300s.

Another set of pitfalls they see is the torrent of visual images produced by amateurs or professionals of limited talent in the current environment.  As Giorgia said, the glut of bad images flowing across the world daily, “threatens to cancel our history.”   Her concerns were echoed by others who expressed concern about the intentionality of the photographers and whether or not they had any kind of social awareness of how their work was actually shaping the audience’s view of the world.

Implicit in this view is the idea that quality storytelling offering a fuller view of our contemporary history can only be provided by professionals. Such photographers have made it their life’s work to master the craft of photography and bear witness effectively to the key moments in life’s unceasing flow so that the audience can learn fundamental truths about the human condition from their images.  Anything less from a content or aesthetic perspective contributes to visual pollution that threatens to obscure a clear view of our current reality as a species profoundly shaping this planet’s future possibilities.

While this view may seem elitist to some, I think it does reflect the reality that photographers want their work to have meaning to an audience. Also, they want to present stories in forms that help the audience connect more readily with the subjects being presented in the photography.  I do think clarity of vision, aesthetic sensibility, and ability to control the forms of presentation do matter for such aspirations to be realized, but ultimately it is the audience that determines the value of the communication.

British photo book publisher Dewi Lewis, left, listens intently as students discuss work during day-long editing session and critique.

Nonetheless, I did not share some of the pessimism and angst I heard being expressed as underlying tones in our conversations. Digital photography doesn’t have to mean surrendering fundamental principles of craft practice and carefully-honed visions.   I remain convinced that “subject-driven” narrative stories can enable the voices of the previously unheard to be considered much more powerfully as a part of daily global journalism.  Multimedia storytelling seems to offer prospects for fusing media elements together in powerful new combinations that do justice to the complexities and mysteries of the human experience.  I don’t think it is inevitable that digital photography has to be inferior to what existed previously in film.  Nor does creative control have to be lost simply because one may need to act collaboratively rather than as a solo practitioner to achieve strong results.  Finally, I think professionals do have a duty not just to advocate for their own work, but also to establish standards and methods that can improve image-making for anyone interested in creating or using visual communication.

I think my colleagues in Amsterdam are right to demand that we in media do better in creating richer, more compelling digital presentation to house the fruits of powerful photography they are producing to tell stories. And they are right to demand that we build the subject-driven narrative with their photography as the primary building block.

South African photographer Bénédicte Kurzen, left, questions a master's critique comment, as Maggie Steber, center, and fellow student Ali Akbar Shirjian, second from right, acknowledge her point.

The fascinating conversations we had in the course of the week have helped me to see more clearly the gap between artistic ambitions and expectations and the actual practices that have been defining the earliest days of multimedia journalism on websites.  I came away re-energized and with a fresh perspective on the state of contemporary photojournalism and documentary photography, thanks to the critiques and frankness of our conversations.

I will do some additional posts shortly about other topics we discussed during the week.

Unlike those who are still trying to maintain journalism as it has been in print or broadcasting during the 20th century, most of my peers in attendance seem to accept and embrace changes now disrupting mainstream media companies. While at times they may lament the economic hardships imposed by creative destruction, they seem excited about the prospects of re-creating a media landscape that still makes good on journalism’s promise to underpin a free, democratic society.

As always, it helps to understand the true nature of the forces disrupting journalism today, and for that, the conference turned to Paul Saffo, a futurist and Stanford professor who is also a Visiting Scholar in the Stanford Media X research network.

Saffo began by informing the audience that the Information Revolution has ended and the rest of the world has caught up to mainstream media and that we are now entering an era of “personal media” where “ the central economic actor is someone who both produces and consumes in the same act. I like the term “creator,” as this new kind of actor is doing something more fundamental than the mere sum of their simultaneous production and consumption. Creators are ordinary people whose everyday actions create value.”

How Paul Saffo graphically represents his job as a futurist.

If that wasn’t enough to absorb, Saffo also explained in detail the forces of creative destruction that are a natural part of the capitalist system, something first detailed by Joseph Schumpeter, a leading economist of the 20th century. “When forces of creative destruction arise, the system moves toward instability and new technology kills off any advantage of the incumbents,” Saffo said.

A slide from Paul Saffo's talk that makes the point that humans tend to over-estimate the speed of short-term adoption of new technology and under-estimate the diffusion of technology in the long term.

Acknowledging that these are “wildly uncertain times for media,” Saffo was also encouraging. He said opportunity beckons, particularly for journalists who “embrace the uncertainty and look for lessons everywhere you go.”

Paul Saffo’s Rules for Understanding Change

• When changes clusters at the extremes, it is the doppler whistle of something really big coming down the track.
• The first thing that happens in periods of massive changes is that quality goes down for awhile before a new economy emerges that again places a premium on quality.
• Uncertainty is good in that it signals opportunity.
• One must flee into the future, while looking backward as far as one can to find “rhyming patterns” that might be presaging the present.
• Become attuned to things that don’t fit, people can’t classify or will even reject.
• The future constantly arrives in unexpected ways.
• Change is never linear, but always follows an S curve shape.
• Cherish failure (particularly if it is someone else’s).
• Look for the significance in failures other people are not understanding.

He concluded by saying, “You are standing on a whale (in terms of the changing media landscape and the new opportunities) – don’t fish for minnows.”

That kind of encouragement was most welcome as a message, particularly for those now underemployed or unemployed. It confirmed the hope of many there. Online journalism will matter and eventually offer the same opportunities to practitioners as those that were offered to print and broadcast journalists in earlier eras. Further, the new technologies and social networks transforming communication patterns now may ultimately yield much richer journalism in the future.

Chris Anderson also addressed this in a slightly different way in a recent issue of Wired magazine:

As venture capitalist Paul Graham put it, “It runs out the rule ‘large and disciplined organizations win’ needs to have a qualification appended: ’at games that change slowly. No one knew till change reached a sufficient speed.”

The result is the next new economy, the one rising from the ashes of this latest meltdown, will favor the small.

To all the usual reasons why small companies have an advantage, from nimbleness too risk-taking, add these new ones: The rise of cloud computing means that young firms no longer need to buy their own IT equipment, which helps them avoid having to raise money or take on debt. Likewise the webification of the supply chain in many industries, from electronics to apparel, means that even the tiniest companies can now order globally, just like the giants. In the same way a musician with a laptop and some gumption, can accomplish most of what a record label does, an ambitious engineer can invent and produce a gadget with little more than the same laptop.

Obviously, that same rule now applies to journalists. We are not at the bottom of a trough, according to Saffo and others I have engaged in recent conversations. We are at the end of an era of human history that has shaped our economy previously and individual economic choices. We are now marching toward the future that will undoubtedly be very different. To change journalism for the better, we will need to adapt and reinvent ourselves.

Workshop leader Bruce Strong, right, glances at the clock as the final deadline approaches Sunday afternoon while conferring with team leader Brien Aho.

As is often the case in the world of professional journalism, the students faced the challenge of entering into the lives of potential subjects, needing to quickly assess the story possibilities and then entering into a relationship with those people to capture some essential reality of their lives as “the story.”

The challenge was to blend the art of “seeing photographically” with an ability to converse and interact sufficiently to record meaningful dialogue, ambient sound, and audio interviews to help develop the subjects’ character as a major point of the storytelling.

Multimedia story development is very hard work for those acting as solo practitioners.  One has to be do some initial observation and interaction, and then quickly decide how best to proceed to get the best possible visuals and accompanying audio.  Or alternatively, to build a story by shooting video that documents the essential “flow” of a subject’s life.  To do so effectively requires mastery of several different journalistic crafts, as well as mastery of the art of gaining a subject’s trust.  The delicate dance between journalistic intention and a subject’s willingness to reveal the essence of their life comes down to a matter of trust.  It is never too early to have students learning the value of treating subjects with respect and a certain curiosity to build that trust in order to glean more effectively the information necessary for a revealing story.

Progress is best accomplished when students have the chance to work against real pressures while by being guided by professionals who are committed to helping them succeed.  Likewise, professionals benefit equally if and when they are working in newsrooms where they are in that same relationship with their editors.

Sculpting stories that communicate effectively about the prime forces moving our world is a central challenge for today’s journalism.  If we are to be of benefit to our audience, we need to hone story-telling skills with a goal of “sense-making” for our audiences.  While it is great that journalism can often entertain and maybe even adapt story structures from the entertainment industry, our central focus ought to be ensuring that our stories have meaning and benefit our audiences.

Hopefully, the citizens of Skaneateles will appreciate the purity of that intention when they encounter the final version of the website featuring student work from the weekend.

Developed by Bottle Rocket, a custom mobile application development shop, and created to enable users to either read or listen to top news stories when using the iPhone, the application enables either live listening to programs occurring on almost any NPR station in the country or it enables time-shifted listening with the ability to bookmark a favorite station and then queue up programs in a playlist.

The iPhone app has garnered more than half million downloads since launch and been solidly positioned in the top ten among free apps in the news category on iTunes, even holding the top slot at one point. As encouraging as that is from NPR’s perspective, the app also seems to be driving a high level of audience engagement with more than 15 minutes of listening occurring with each opening of the application, according to Wilson.

He believes this would indicate users of this application are making a deliberate decision to consume NPR news and information in the moment and that they have time to do so when opening the application. It supports NPR’s aspiration that this application would enable their fans to listen whenever it is convenient and have that ability on an “untethered” device even more mobile than a computer or radio itself (given the fact that transistor radios are no longer in fashion).

I am interested in these results because they confirm for me the wisdom of a strategy recognizing that news and information must be fitted into the fabric of the audience’s life, rather than demanding “appointment viewing or listening”  as a pre-condition for media consumption.  Further, NPR has recognized that its core platform can be easily adapted for use on another distribution channel, while offering two distinct ways to consume news and information within that new channel.

I think the strategy recognizes that the audience’s time for consumption of media is limited. By facilitating rather than fighting day-parted, time-shifted media consumption, NPR is winning even more support and positive plaudits from their already-loyal audience.

Creating iPhone apps is also logical for NPR because it provides an alternative to the “lean forward” search-driven media consumption patterns prevalent on news websites. Yet, it does not force NPR to eschew the web as another platform for news and information delivery. In fact, their strategy represents the new ideal for organizations delivering journalism; be ubiquitously available to your audience, recognizing the audience may consume on different platforms at different times of the day for different reasons.

Equally interesting are the implications of NPR’s decision to offer open API’s to the development community. This led directly to the iPhone app NPR Addict, created by Bradley Flubacher, a professional programmer and volunteer firefighter in State College, Pa. His iPhone app was developed and offered for free, consistent with the NPR mission of making the highest quality news and information freely and universally available to “meet the highest standards of public service in journalism and cultural expression.” It actually predated the release of NPR’s own NPR News iPhone app and was also developed for free by Mr. Flubacher because he is such a big fan of NPR’s journalism.

According to Wilson, “opening up the APIs allows for a different relationship with our audience and the open source community. We are fortunate to have a diversified revenue stream and a very tight relationship with our audience. Our audience does feel like they “own” us and the open API project is a way of further engaging the audience while also allowing local member stations to present NPR content on their own sites to help them also strengthen ties to their local audience.”

The necessity of staying abreast of potentially disruptive advances in technologies is still very much a reality for NPR as it is with other mainstream media companies. That led me to ask questions about the value of new applications and how NPR is going to shape the development process moving forward. This is relevant because NPR also plans to release applications for the Symbian and Android mobile platforms later this year.

He elaborated on NPR’s development process this way:

The NPR approach is to use work by open source developers, to do some development in-house, and to work with outside developers when necessary on technologies that may be very specialized, or being developed very quickly by outside entities. When working with outside developers, we need to own and understand the code so we can support it properly and modify it, if necessary, over time to meet our needs.

Three factors need to be present for success in creating new applications, according to Wilson.

• Strong insights into audience needs and behaviors.
• Internal focus on product development, likely product lifecycles, and potential new platforms for content distribution.
• Tight integration of product development efforts with the existing editorial products and operations.

On the first point, it is crucial that a media company deeply understand how the audience is adopting and using new technologies. Then that must be matched against the core competencies of the organization as well as the current value proposition being expressed. This strong insight has to go beyond standard focus group questioning.
We are operating a news organization that is fundamentally healthy and optimistic about its future. People are excited about the prospects three to four years out, and it is easier to get our entire company excited about the possibilities of exploiting all digital delivery platforms. That transition has also been aided by a grant from the Knight Foundation to train all of the NPR editorial staff on all aspects of digital publishing. That training is helping to expand internal thinking about how NPR reaches its audience and can give the staff a clearer sense of what content the audience is looking for in different venues at different times of the day.

Finally, NPR has moved to the AGILE development process and begun to embrace it for such things as the recent redesign of their website, an event that preceded the application launch by about a month. Adopting that method of product development and innovation helps position NPR to function more like a software company than a large media company in this aspect.

We are shifting from a the point where the web is a fairly conventional news platform to a situation where digital delivery is becoming something different. Content is finding the audience, and the audience is coalescing around platforms that best serve the audience needs overall.

In closing the conversation, I asked Wilson to compare the act of bringing NPR fully in the digital age with the same efforts being waged by other major media companies who operate exclusively in the for-profit world, beset with responsibilities to shareholders about stock prices, profit margins, etc. I felt his recent past experience as USA TODAY’s Executive Editor would give him a good frame of reference for making the comparison.

“At NPR, we have a different mission and business model. We are not under the same pressure as companies dependent on advertising. We are also blessed with a stable audience that may actually be growing. It is very hard to take mature large media companies and give them the characteristics of a scrappy startup to address the challenges of creative destruction introduced by disruptive technology changes. That kind of transformation requires leadership and resolve from the highest levels of management all the way through the organization.”

His response leads me to think about one more point. NPR has chosen to recognize that their content has value on multiple platforms with separate delivery capabilities.  This view contrasts sharply with media companies who claim to be “platform-agnostic” and who see their content flowing across platforms without any corresponding necessity to really re-think or re-form content presentation to take advantage of specific platform attributes. It seems to me that NPR’s approach is more sophisticated and more likely to breed further success.  It doesn’t hurt either that NPR is enaging their audience so directly to help them enhance the fundamental value proposition.

While the use of video Skype as a primary communication channel for college students might not surprise any college communications professor, I think it offers further confirmation of signals being missed by print-oriented media companies who continue to view multimedia storytelling as an unnecessary luxury.  What these companies don’t seem to get is that people want to communicate with visual and auditory communication modalities as principal mechanisms of information transmission.  When I ask my daughter about it, she acts as if the answer is so obvious that the question shouldn’t even be asked. She and her fellow students value the video Skype chat software because it enables them to gauge facial expressions, voice tone, and body language as essential parts of the overall content messaging.  Given their far-flung locations, this is as close as they can get to maintaining the intimate conversations that once characterized their daily connections in one physical location, namely their high school.

Multimedia story-telling offers vivid, concrete expression of certain information. It can aid rapid cognitive processing of complex data relationships when such things are expressed visually.   Digital natives understand these value propositions, and they expect their media diet to offer such content as a matter of course.  They want information and conversation to be tied into a seamless web that enables them to make necessary, useful choices in their life.  They expect to be able to interact with such communication and share it easily, while having it ubiquitously available via the platforms they are using in the moment.

I don’t think these lessons should be ignored by media companies seeking to stay relevant.

As a back story, Skype’s own future is a subject of some debate and interest among tech bloggers and technology reporters alike.  According to The New York Times,  several venture capital firms have pooled resources to purchase Skype from eBay despite  a lawsuit now underway against eBay that has been filed by JoltID, a company owned by Skype’s original co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, over the underlying software that powers Skype.  While experts disagree about the possible implications of the suit now headed apparently for a midyear trial in 2010, it has not deterred purchase efforts.  It will be interesting to see how and when Skype’s new owners resolve the legal issues and how this situation might affect Skype’s usage by digital natives in the future.

The audience member wanted to know if it was possible to express visual narrative in a video without using either voiceover narration, or even voice dialogue. I asserted that it was possible, thinking immediately of the movie Koyaanisquatsi. I first saw the movie at an art house on South Street in Philadelphia in 1982 with Michael Mally, a colleague working with me at The Philadelphia Inquirer. We were both intrigued by the blending of shooting and editing techniques in this film directed by Godfrey Reggio, with cinematography by Ron Fricke and a music score by Philip Glass. The use of slow motion and time lapse image sequences paced perfectly with the music expressed a narrative story that struck us as magical.

The motivations of the movie’s creators are well-expressed in this video clip and they provide much food for thought to feed our creative imaginations.

Over the years, on a much simpler level, I have realized that many television commercials tell a story in 30 seconds or less, also using only music and visual sequences to express a central narrative idea. One such example is a VW commercial from several years ago that featured the music of Nick Drake while extolling the possibilities of traveling in a Golf convertible being introduced to various markets as a Cabrio.

The Mexican beer company Grupo Modelo has excelled with well-filmed commercials featuring touches of humor such as this example

Or this example that was released in 2000 as a Christmas ad on U.S. broadcast networks.

Finally, this Mini-Cooper commercial as a great example. I think such techniques can be utilized to tell stories, particularly using humor, and they can be universally understood by the audience.

The point of mentioning these ads is that visual storytelling can offer a complete narrative with music and images alone, confirming the linkages to aural storytelling that Marshall McLuhan once noted as the language of tribes at the dawn of human history. Seems like we are hardwired to appreciate stories told this way and create in this language too. Consider the possibilities to expand visual storytelling done for journalistic purposes.

“TWIP”

In the interests of full disclosure, I make a brief cameo appearance in her video but what I really want to reference is the value of this form of presentation as a vehicle for connecting the dots of journalism and art present in compelling images. Brian Storm, TWIP’s originator and the original multimedia director at MSNBC.com, conceived of it as a vehicle for presenting the most compelling photos of the week as shot by professional photographers working for wire services and newspapers around the world. Rather than trying to be a recap of the news, he saw the feature as connecting an audience to the most interesting photos that could truly express the diversity of life on our planet and the varied types of events and experiences that were being referenced visually.

This goal continues today, even as the style of presentation has evolved to include audio and the web template itself has become much more sophisticated. I think the current group of editors has done a very good job of curation and filtration to ensure that the fundamental mission is carried out. Their work helps ensure that the cream rises to the top and that the resulting images are truly among the best to be on offer each week from those sources.  It has been widely emulated and imitated by other news websites, becoming a visual presentation convention.

The fundamental truth about a particular challenge of photo editing today is actually going through the massive tidal flow of images that pours forth each day to make good selections. The complexity of that task has been magnified because of the massive increase in high-quality amateur photography yielded by digital tools and the multiplicity of distribution tools available via the Internet, like Flickr for example.

Once upon a time, accessing situations that yielded such great photography was hard to do, and people with the skills and resources to do the work at that quality were still relatively scarce. Today, part of the equation has been turned on its head. It is audience time to consume images that is relatively scarce. Therefore, it is not surprising the audience would place a premium on resources and distribution platforms that can ensure rapid and timely delivery of the best images. Those images themselves have immense value in helping us all understand and appreciate the world around us in all its nuance, complexity, joy and heartbreak. It is equally important that features like TWIP continue to evolve to ensure we can all have access to the truths contained in those images.