Photojournalism and Editorial Processes
While edited news is getting increasingly visual, photographers lose their jobs and news agencies compete with social media and citizen journalists for visual material. In this period of paradigmatic change three Nordic image researchers will present their latest findings on visual journalism.
Hovedinnhold
Welcome to an open seminar filled with research news on photojournalism in editorial processes.
1015-1045: Crisis – what crisis? Strategic responses and visual editorial competence in two Norwegian and one Danish media house.
Anne Hege Simonsen, Associate Professor of Journalism, Oslo Akershus University College
1045-1115: The world according to Touko – a case study on the current transformations of narrative documentary photography
Hanna Weselius, Associate Professor, Aalto University, Finland
1115-1145: The face of the news? On the news value of photographs and editorial processes concerning images
Maria Nilsson, Associate Professor of Media and Communication, Mid Sweden University
1145-1200: Discussion
About the presenters
In a series of interviews conducted in a selection of Norwegian and Danish media houses in 2015 and 2016, Anne Hege Simonsen and Jon Petter Evensen found editorial responses that vary from rejection of the entire concept of a crisis, via different forms of adaption to capitulation.
Hanna Weselius studies the ongoing change in documentary photography by following Touko Hujanen (b. 1987), a prize-winning, university-trained photojournalist working for quality publications worldwide. In 2012, he established a crowd-funded printed newspaper, Uuden Maan Sanomat, of which he is the editor-in-chief and the only employee. In his work, Hujanen mixes strategies from the art world and the news media, building up a peculiar performative way of constructing media events – not documenting what happened, not waiting for something to happen, but helping anything happen.
Maria Nilsson’s current research examines the changing function of news photographs over time, as well as news values ascribed to lead-story photographs in editorial processes. Her findings raise questions about the notion of news value in photographs and the validity of the journalistic notion of photographs as eye-witness accounts, as newsrooms increasingly turn to archival images, stock photos and portraiture to fill the pages.The study is part of a three-year research project, funded by the Ann-Marie and Gustaf Anders Foundation of Media Research and directed by Maria Nilsson, charting the function of photographs in paper and digital editions of Swedish newspapers since 1995.