By any other name
Dodged a bullet last week. The National Press Photographers Association, after much debate, decided not to change its name to The Society of Visual Journalists.
As a long-time member of NPPA, I’m glad I don’t have to start referring to myself as a "visual journalist." In fact, I don’t even care that much for the term "journalist." A journalist, legendary Chicago newsman Finley Peter Dunne once said, is "an unemployed newspaperman."
Among photographers in the news biz, a loud and sometimes contentious debate rages over just what to call ourselves. Some prefer "photojournalist." Others like "story tellers." Still others just refer to themselves as "shooters."
But "visual journalist?" I don’t think so. In the end, all of us who work for the news profession — whether we produce content for newspapers, magazines, the web, radio or television — are journalists. We use different tools to produce our content but, in the end, we work towards the same goal: to inform our readers. As both a photographer and a writer, I use words, photos and video to tell stories. Each is a tool.
Elmer Broz, my city editor at The Alton Telegraph in Illinois back in the early 70s, used to tell me to write a story that "explodes a picture in the reader’s mind." To Elmer, even an ink-stained wretch with a typewriter could be a "visual journalist."
I’m an old fuddy-duddy who read the Alton Telegraph in the late 1970′s (and the Saint Louis Globe-Fascist,too). I’m rather attached to the word photographer. It’s descriptive at the simple level and, if you want to wax poetic or contemplative, the concept of “light writer” and “writing with light” provide food for many thoughtful hours wondering why it is that some of the things we see with our eyes get ruined when framed by a camera while others are made clearer by the same process.