Citizen Photojournailsm

Citizen photojournalist.

I’ve recoiled somewhat from the notion in the past, fairly confident the power of photojournalism would be diminished if we relied too much on everyday people and their cell phone videos to report the major stories of the day, (and of course concerned about the ultimate affect it might have on my own livelihood). However when I first heard of the crash into the Hudson last week I immediately thought of the citizen photos that would inevitably appear, yet also confident there would be “real” images as well given it was NYC and the home base of some the finest photojournalists in the world. What I’ve found remarkable, and perhaps I just haven’t looked in the right places, is the relative dearth of those “real” images and the relative high quality of the citizen images. In the NY Times for example there are 16 news images and 18 reader submitted. I hate to say it but in many cases the reader submitted images are more compelling.

Check these:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/01/15/nyregion/20090115_plane_readers_slideshow_index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/01/15/us/20090115-PLANECRASH_index.html

and commentary here:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/01/citizen-photo-o.html