From the Communications Director of Doctors Without Borders – a paradigm shift has happened and is articulated here.
Wanted: The networked photojournalist – British Journal of Photography.
Every day, I’m inundated with friend requests on Facebook and LinkedIn from photojournalists the world over inviting me to review their portfolios. They offer to provide free photos to work with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières MSF in the field in return for helping them get to cover international stories.
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Yet, what is essential today is the ability of a photojournalist to bypass the uncertainty of the conventional news cycle and the vagaries of for-profit news outlets to reach audiences with their stories. I’m looking to hire the networked photojournalist. And their network needs to take all shapes and forms: from old (Time, The New York Times) and new (Huffington Post, GlobalPost) media clientele to social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, and other distribution channels) and access to influencers (policy-makers, funders, activists, other NGOs).
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But with every industrial revolution there are trade-offs – individuality and custom artistry sacrificed at the altar of efficiency and supply-chain management. Armed with smartphones people are streaming their lives and “citizen” journalists are documenting some of the most dramatic events of our time, whether revolutions in Cairo or mass murder in Syria. Read entire story