Kael Alford on Campus - April 24 - ROOM CHANGE

Mark this on your calendar - photojournalist Kael Alford will be speaking at the Student Learning Center (room 248 - changed room) on Thursday, April 24 at 4:30 p.m. Her work from Iraq was featured in the Georgia Review magazine last year.

Now Available: My Dream Job

For years I joked the ultimate job for me was photo editor at the Wall Street Journal. Because, as you may know, they never ran photos. Saunter in to the daily news meeting and have an editor bark out section titles, then call, "PHOTO!"

And calmly respond, "Not today, boss, maybe tomorrow."

On Wednesday, the venerable WSJ (for years more gray than the Gray Lady) published ... on the front page ... photos.

Ahhh, Blogging and Sports Comes of Age

Former student Tom O'Connor forwarded along a New York Times story about sports organizations wrestling with the blogging world. Do they credential them? Do they limit their online "reporting?"

Saw the News, Bought the T-shirt

I am all for news organizations finding a way to stay financially viable. Mostly, I believe if they can remain relevant to their readers, they'll make it. (I know, overly simplistic, but that's the core for me - stay relevant.)

While poking around CNN.com today, I saw an extra little icon at the end of a couple of story headlines. I was used to seeing the video icon, telling me this was a video story instead of a text one. But the new icon looked like, well ... a t-shirt.

And it was.

Next to the following stories, you could click on a link and order a t-shirt with the headline printed on it:

• DUI gizmo might've been wrong for 2 years
• Principal sets up drug sting on student
• Prince drops copter in galpal's yard
• Weird fish leave sea, spawn on beach

We wonder why our readers don't turn to us? Maybe it's because we've given up hope on being news sites and are now entertainizing everything, trying to make it palatable.

I thought the "spotted" idea was bad ... now this.

There should be a rant right here about how JOURNALISTS need to take their news product back. How we need to fix this before a bunch of business-school drop-outs try to entertainize all that we do in a search for unrealistic profit margins, but if you're reading this, you've probably got your own rant going.

The Homicide Blog

Not much here in the way of photojournalism, but CNN.com has a story up on Jill Leovy who, for the last year, worked on the Los Angeles Times' Homicide Blog.

Street level reporting at its truest form, Leovy went and talked with families and friends of more than 800 homicide victims over the last year.

One for the Soon-To-Be-Graduates

Lisa Williams over at the Idea Lab has a post on the "10 Things Journalists Should Know About Surviving in a High-Tech Industry."

It took me a moment with thinking of "journalism" as a "high-tech industry," but it is. A lot of the insane things dot-commers were doing a decade ago we're doing now ... a decade late. Don't know how to code? Learn it on your own time, get yourself a better job. Don't know how to do an audio slide show? Learn it on your own time, get yourself a better job.

It's no longer good enough to be good at your current job, you need to be good at the next job, too, even before you get it.

Exhaustion

That's what I'm still feeling, but it's a good thing. This past weekend was our Third Annual UGA Photojournalism Weekend Workshop, this year based here in Athens.

Visiting editor Mike Roy, from the Westchester (N.Y.) Journal, with help from USA Today's Katye Martens and the Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier's Sarah Bates, put together a video on the weekend's activities. (Click that link to see the video, some browsers are having trouble showing the whole screen in the blog.)

Over-Photoshopping

Mindy McAdams, Flash Goddess, wrote about a blog post by Carrie Niland, who I know but didn't know had a blog ...

Anyway, Carrie takes on an over-toned image by a former intern that recently appears in Photo District News. The comments are as good as the entry.

World Nomad Photo Competition

It says you can join a National Geographic photographer in Australia ...

Fine print is a little, well, odd ... seems you need to fly yourself there and they'll fly you back. Not sure on that, though.

Pulitzer Prizes

Announced today ...

For Spot Braking Photography, Reuters' Adrees Latif for his photo of wounded Japanese photographer Kenji Nagai in Myanmar.

For Feature Photography, Preston Gannaway of the Concord (N.H.) Monitor for photos of a family coping with a parent's terminal illness.

Brave New World

This will only be filed under my "Rants and Rambles" category, because that's all it is.

A student of mine, while working on a project for his history class, took some photos of a chicken processing plant. He stood on the side of the road, took photos of what was plainly visible ... and was then questioned by not just a local sheriff's deputy but by the FBI, as well.

Timing is everything - in his class this week, we're talking about ethics, copyright and the law.

Business Photos

The Reuters blog posted a nice collection of economic and business related photos. There are lots of shooters who hate getting a business assignment, I used to like them. Something different.

Of course, 75% of what I shot was sports which, believe it or not, gets tiring after a while.

Joe McNally on Junk Piles and Herschel Walker

Over on Joe McNally's blog, he talks about a workshop he was teaching and, at the tail end of it, is a little bit about shooting covers for national magazines, this one on UGA's own Herschel Walker.

Probably of more interest locally than non-locally ...

Thinking of Journalism Grad School?

Then you must read Mindy McAdams's post on it first.

Some semi-random thoughts ...

Communication theory is really lost on those who haven't yet experienced a lot of communication ... be sure you love journalism before committing more time and money into learning about it ... most 30-year veteran copy editors knows more about journalism than anybody I've ever taken a class from ... real life is way cooler than academic life.

Guests

Billy Weeks, director of graphics and photography at the Chattanooga Times Free Press, joined the Multimedia Journalism class this week to talk about what they're doing and where this is all heading.

He got the "five things all graduating journalists should know" question and answered thusly:

1. Report — Journalism is all about connecting with subjects, the media doesn't matter. Young students are afraid to ask questions — don't be.
2. Be able to handle audio
3. Be able to handle still photos, especially strobes
4. Be able to handle video
5. Team Work — Share ideas, communicate with your co-workers

UGAzine Looking for Photo Stories

Passing along ...

Each semester, ugazine publishes a two-page, color Photo Essay for the
department "In A Thousand Words." All submissions will be reviewed by our
Photo Editor, Editor-In-Chief and Managing Editor. If your work is selected for
publication, then you'll be asked to submit a brief (2-3 sentence) summary
paragraph of the story to accompany the photos and captions.
To submit your work, please burn 8-10 high resolution (minimum 300 DPI) JPEG
images with the captions included in the photo information area to a CD or
DVD. Please write in Sharpie on the CD your name, e-mail address and cell
phone number. Also, print out a word document with all your contact
information and the photo numbers with their corresponding captions. Attach
the CD to the sheet of paper and place in the ugazine box in Sophie Barnes'
office (aside Kent Middleton's office) by the last day of spring classes.
If you have any questions, please e-mail ugazine@gmail.com.
Thanks for your submission.