Getty Images’ John Moore to Speak at BVJC

Getty Images’ John Moore to Speak at

Bellingham Visual Journalism Conference July 17-18

June 19, 2009

BELLINGHAM, Wash.  — John Moore of Getty Images, whose gripping photographs of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in late 2007, earned him two first-place World Press Photo awards, will be among the presenters at this year’s Bellingham Visual Journalism Conference.

Moore was the sole American journalist present when Bhutto was assassinated on December 27, 2007 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

Earlier this year he was named 2008 “Magazine Photographer of the Year” from Pictures of the Year International (POYi) and was awarded “Photojournalist of the Year” from the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA).

The conference will take place at Western Washington University on Friday and Saturday, July 17-18.
Moore joins a lineup of presenters that also includes Michel du Cille, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and assistant managing editor for photography at The Washington Post; Seattle Times photojournalist Alan Berner, NPPA Region 11 2008 Photographer of the Year; Meredith Birkett, senior multimedia editor for special projects at MSNBC.com; and Scott Mc Kiernan, CEO/founder of ZUMA Press and publisher of DOUBLEtruck Magazine and zReportage.com.

Also presenting will be multimedia photojournalist Wes Pope, most recently at The Rocky Mountain News; Heidi de Laubenfels, deputy managing editor for strategy and product development at The Seattle Times; and Jim Seida, senior multimedia producer at msnbc.com.

The conference is co-sponsored by Western Washington University’s Department of Journalism and The Bellingham Herald.
Leaders in the field of visual journalism, including video and still photographers, multimedia producers, agents, and online editors, will share their expertise. Attendees will have the opportunity to explore new avenues for visual storytelling, upgrade their skills, and have their portfolios critiqued by professional visual journalists.

Two concurrent and intensive multimedia workshops, one on producing audio slideshows and the other on shooting video, will be offered Friday, July 17. Cost of each workshop is $100, and space is limited; registration is first-come, first-served.

The conference is offering free registration for Saturday’s speaker series and a catered lunch to all visual journalists who have been laid off from their jobs in the past year. Proceeds from a silent auction of photographic prints will help offset those costs. If you have been laid off and you are coming, please let us know so we can order enough lunch.

• • • Both days (workshop and presentations): $150.
    • Professionals for Saturday’s presentations only (includes lunch): $75.
    • Students for Saturday’s presentations only: $50.

  Registration fees:

More information: http://www.wwu.edu/visualjournalism/

Contacts:
John Harris, Bellingham Visual Journalism Conference director, (360) 650-6140, john.harris@wwu.edu;
Russ Kendall, BVJC Co-director, (360) 255-1014, russkendall@aol.com,
Marissa Doiron, event coordinator, (360) 650-4436, marissa.doiron@wwu.edu;
Carol Brach, journalism department manager, (360) 650-3252, cbrach@hope.journ.wwu.edu

Russ Kendall, Picture Editor

The Bellingham Herald and TheBellinghamHerald.com

1155 N. State St., Bellingham WA 98225

Voice: (360) 715-2265

Fax: (360) 756-2826

E-mail: russ.kendall@bellinghamherald.com

Convergence ‘09 Live

The NPPA Convergence in Las Vegas is live.  Check out several features from a constantly updated live blog, flickr account, and periodic live video stream.

Go to live.nppa.org for coverage of the national conference.

Navigating the Downturn – Part two

This is the second part of 3 podcasts from the Navigating the Downturn NPPA Region 11 Workshop on May 9, 2009.

In this podcast Craig Mitchelldyer, Rod Mar, Karl Maasdam and Rich Frishman talk about how to continue being a photographer in current economic conditions.

Some of the points covered in this part include:

• Promoting yourself online and building your brand.
• How to use networking sites to get your name out.
• Value of your work and making wise business decisions.
• Banking, accounting, taxes and paying yourself.
• Insurance tips
• Thoughts on making a fresh start with little capital.
• Importance of photo rights and registration

——-

NEXT UP — Part three: What do you charge for multimedia projects?

Subscribe to the Region 11 Podcast Channel in iTunes.

(note the original copy of this podcast was  not working, if you have problems please let me know.)
-TJ

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Navigating the Downturn – It’s a wrap and a podcast

Navigating The Downturn: Seattle Listen to the panelists by clicking on the links below. The three podcasts will be provided over the next week and a half.  Each episode is straight from the workshop with audience participation included and are approximately an hour long. Podcast Episodes Introduction Part 1

SEATTLE — Region 11 of the National Press Photographers Association hosted “Navigating The Downturn: A Photography Survival Discussion,” on May 9, 2009, in downtown Seattle.

The event organized by past NPPA President, Tony Overman, to help Region 11 members who are feeling the impact of the economic downturn.

“A photojournalist who is out of work feels pretty alone,” NPPA’s vice president Sean D. Elliot, said. “Without the camaraderie of the newsroom we are prone to feeling disconnected. The Internet, a message board, a Webinar, an eMail list, can only help so much. Getting together, 10 or 15 or 30 of us at a time, to hear some advice on building a business plan and to ask questions and to complain and moan if necessary, is a lot more helpful to the individual. The idea is to help build local, grassroots connections.”

“With the near-collapse of the newspaper industry there is a glut of former newspaper photographers determined to keep doing what they do best,” Overman said, “but they don’t have the training and knowledge of business ownership, proper pricing, negotiating, handling contracts and taxes, and determining the true cost of doing business. An influx of ill-prepared photographers into the freelance market is in no one’s best interest.”

Special thanks go to Navigating the Downturn’s panel, which included Craig Mitchelldyer, an editorial, portrait, and wedding photographer based in Portland, OR, who is a former newspaper staff photographer; Rod Mar, team photographer for the Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Sounders, a former Seattle Times staff photographer to took a buy-out from the paper; Karl Maasdam, a portrait and wedding photographer who left his job as the chief photographer for the Corvallis Gazette-Times in 2004 to start his own business; and Rich Frishman, an editorial and annual report photographer from Seattle. Overman moderated the panel.

The workshop model set up in Seattle may be part of a larger national NPPA endeavor to host similar workshops in their regions based on a planned program template, of which the Seattle program is the first.

NPPA executive director Jim Straight says a request has been sent out to NPPA volunteers to organize similar programs in their own regions.

———-

Visual editor Charles Apple has written an excellent blog post about what to do if you’ve lost your job. It’s online here.

Text from this post was modified from the nppa.org site.

Free Workshop – Navigating the Downturn: A Photography Survival Discussion”

Free Workshop
“Navigating the Downturn: A Photography Survival Discussion”

With the near-collapse of the newspaper industry, there is a glut of former newspaper photographers determined to keep doing what they do best, but without the training and knowledge of business ownership. Proper pricing, negotiations, contracts, taxes, and the true costs of doing business are not something that those who have worked on a newspaper staff are often exposed to.

An influx of ill-prepared photographers into the freelance market is in no one’s best interest.

In response, the National Press Photographers Association is holding a free educational event, “Navigating the Downturn: A Photography Survival Discussion”, on Saturday, May 9, from 6:00-9:30 pm in the community room at the “2200 Westlake” complex on South Lake Union.

The panel includes:

Craig Mitchelldyer
Editorial, Wedding and Sports photographer located in Portland. He was formerly a staff photographer for Community Newspapers before leaving the suburban Portland chain in 2004. His editorial clients include the USA Today, Getty Images, and nearly every newspaper in Oregon. He is also the team photographer for the AAA Portland Beavers and the Portland Timbers soccer teams. 
www.craigmitchelldyer.com

Rod Mar
Team photographer for Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Sounders20FC. He is a former Seattle Times staff photographer who recently took a buy-out offer.
http://www.rodmarphoto.com

Karl Maasdam
Wedding and portrait photographer in Corvallis, Ore., He voluntarily left his chief photographer job at the Corvallis Gazette-Times to start his own business in 2004.
www.karlmaasdam.com

Rich Frishman (tentative)
Editorial and annual report photographer in Seattle, specializing in location work involving people: photojournalism, environmental portraiture, photo essays and photomosaics. His photography regularly appears in numerous national publications, annual reports and commercial venues.
www.frishphoto.com

Moderator:
Tony Overman
Staff Photographer at The Olympian
www.theolympian.com
NPPA Immediate Past President
www.nppa.org

Details:
“Navigating the Downturn – Seattle”
Free Photography Survival Panel Discussion
Saturday, May 9
6:00 – 9:30 pm
Community Room
“2200 Westlake” complex in South Lake Union
900 Lenora Street
Seattle, Wash.

There is plenty of public parking available.

For more information:
Tony Overman
tonyoly@aol.com
(360) 790-2963 cell

Bellingham Visual Journalism Conference 2009

BELLINGHAM, Wash. – Region 11 Director Russ Kendall announced that
Michel du Cille, three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and assistant
managing editor for photography at The Washington Post, will speak at
this summer’s Bellingham Visual Journalism Conference (BVJC).
Kendall also announced that in a nod to these difficult times,
visual journalists who have been laid off in the last year or so will
be able to attend the Saturday events, including a catered lunch, free
of charge. There will be a silent print auction to help cover these
costs. High-quality unmounted photographs donated to the auction will
be gratefully accepted.
The conference, which is held at Western Washington University’s
Department of Journalism, will take place on Friday, July 17 and
Saturday, July 18.
Among the presenters will be Seattle Times photojournalist Alan
Berner, the NPPA Region 11 Photographer of the Year/2008; Meredith
Birkett, senior multimedia editor for special projects at MSNBC.com;
and Scott Mc Kiernan, founding member of ZUMA Press.
Also presenting are multimedia photojournalist Wes Pope, most
recently at The Rocky Mountain News; Heidi de Laubenfels, deputy
managing editor for strategy and product developm
ent at The Seattle
Times; and Jim Seida, senior multimedia producer at msnbc.com. More
speakers will be announced as they confirm.
Two concurrent, intermediate-to-advanced, day-long multimedia
workshops will be offered Friday, July 17. One workshop will be on
audio slideshows and the other on shooting video. These are not
beginning workshops. Space is limited; registration is first-come,
first-served.
The registration fee for a Friday multimedia workshop is $100. The
fee for Saturday’s speaker series, which includes lunch, is $75.
However, if you register for both days the fee is just $150. Students
with current student IDs can attend Saturday’s presentations for only
$50.
Leaders in the field of visual journalism, including video and
still photographers, multimedia producers, agents, and online editors,
will share their expertise. Attendees will have the opportunity to
explore new avenues for visual storytelling, upgrade their skills, and
have their portfolios critiqued by professional visual journalists.
For directions and more information:
http://www.wwu.edu/visualjournalism/

Contacts:
John Harris, BVJC director, (360) 650-6140, john.harris@wwu.edu,
Russ Kendall, BVJC co-director, 360-715-2265, russ.kendall@bellinghamherald.com
Marissa Doiron, event coordinator, (360) 650-4436, marissa.doiron@wwu.edu;

Seattle P-I’s fate sealed

Final Seattle P-I Will Roll Off Press On Tuesday

SEATTLE, WA (March 16, 2009) – The Tuesday edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer will the the last one to roll off the press for the 146-year-old newspaper.

Owner Hearst Corp. made the announcement this morning, although everyone at the paper, and Seattle, and in the bigger world of journalism knew for some time that this day was coming soon.

The P-I will continue to exist as a Web-only publication, with a handful of employees generating its content instead of the 170 P-I employees who had been producing the newspaper until today.

“Our goal now is to turn Seattlepi.com into the leading news and information portal in the region,” Hearst CEO Frank A. Bennack Jr. said in a company press release. P-I editor and publisher Roger Oglesby told a silent newsroom this morning, “Tonight we’ll be putting the paper to bed for the last time. But the bloodline will live on.”

The P-I was Seattle’s oldest business, much like The Rocky Mountain News which Scripps shut down on February 27 was Colorado’s oldest business (150 years).

“This is a hard day for all of us,” Oglesby said. “We were fortunate to be part of a great newspaper with a great tradition, and we’ve been blessed to be part of a wonderful group of talented people. We all hate to see that end. “But we knew it was coming. Hearst fought for years to keep this place going, but time and these rotten economic conditions finally caught up with us.”

The paper says about 20 people will make up the online P-I staff, about 10 creating content (including one photographer) and ten Web support people. Today’s story in the P-I also said there are 20 newly-hired advertising sales staff members.

In her post about the changes to come, executive producer Michelle Nicolosi said, “We don’t have reporters, editors or producers—everyone will do and be everything. Everyone will write, edit, take photos and shoot video, produce multimedia and curate the home page. That’ll be a training challenge for everyone, but we’re all up for the challenge and totally ready to pick up all these skills. I’m personally looking forward to becoming a better photographer and videographer via personal coaching from our incredible photographer Josh Trujillo.”

Back in January the company said the P-I was for sale, and if no buyer stepped forward the paper might close or continue online only.

When no buyer came forward by the 60-day deadline last week, speculation started to swirl about how long Hearst would continue publishing the daily before pulling the plug. The P-I lost $14 million just last year.

Today’s closure announcement ends the Joint Operating Agreement with Seattle’s other large daily, The Seattle Times.

Employees had already been told their jobs could end very shortly, but they would continue to receive pay up through March 18 (due to federal laws that spell out how much notice employees must receive before a business shuts down or lays off workers).

Today’s P-I’s story of the paper’s closing says that workers will get severance packages worth about two weeks pay for each year they’ve worked.

A week ago today, employees were offered a “Last Visit To The Globe” on the newspaper’s roof, a giant spinning neon planet with “It’s In The P-I” written around the globe, where they took a series of group photographs.

Late last week P-I business reporter Dan Richman discovered that the company was having packing boxes and shredder bins delivered to the newsroom by the end of the week so that desks could be cleaned out and sensitive notes destroyed, so P-I employees gained an additional clue that the closure was approaching.

Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen told Times employees in an eMail about their rival’s closure, saying that the Times “finds no joy in the loss of any journalistic voice.” But at the same time Blethen acknowledged that the Times being free from the burden of the Joint Operating Agreement “gives The Seattle Times the best opportunity to be viable long term.”

At one time, and as recently as January, some P-I watchers thought it would be Hearst who would buy The Seattle Times and make the city a one-newspaper town.

Now, only a few short weeks later, it’s the Times that’s left standing as the P-I turns off the presses.

On Wednesday, subscribers to the P-I will be automatically switched over to The Seattle Times.

BOP Television Judging Underway

ST. PETERSBURG, FL (February 23, 2009) – Judging in the National Press Photographers Associations annual Best Of Photojournalism competition’s Television categories is now underway at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

On Sunday the judges picked winners in the categories of Team, Documentary, Sports Features, and Deadline.

Winning videos will be posted on Poynter’s Web site daily as the judging continues throughout this week.

And there will be a live, daily online chat with the judges at 12:00 noon EST, hosted by Poynter’s Al Tompkins. Viewers will be able to ask the judges questions, and to hear what they love and dislike about the entries they’ve seen that day.

The online chat and the winning videos by category are online here.

In the Team Entry category, first place was Rob Collet and Chencho Flores of KTUL-TV in Tulsa for “A day in the Life of Animal Control.” Second place was Eric Geddy and Brad Swagger of KMSP-TV in Minneapolis for “A Link to the Lost. And third place was Darren Durlach and Stan Heist of WBFF-TV in Baltimore for “Ball of Fury.” Honorable mention was awarded to Anne Herbst and Dave Delozier of KUSA-TV in Denver for “Emma’s Class.”

In the Sports Features category, first place was William Middeke of KARE-TV in Minneapolis for “Not Your Kids League.” Second place was Jim Douglas of KARE-TV for “Courage to Sail On.” Third place was Anne Herbst of KUSA-TV in Denver for “Defined by Seconds.” And honorable mentions were given to Scott Jensen of KTUU-TV in Anchorage for “Back Where She Belongs … In The Mountains,” and Michael DelGiudice of WNBC-TV in New York for “A Bump in the Road.”

In the Deadline category, first place was Ernesto Torres of KHOU-TV in Houston for “Live or Die.” Second place was John Doung of WNDU-TV in South Bend, IN, for If Only for an Hour.” Third place was Michael DelGiudice of WNBC-TV in New York for “You Call This A Stadium.” And an honorable mention was awarded to Everett McEwan of KWGN-TV in Denver for “Homeowners Worst Nightmare.”

In the Documentary category the judges did not award a first place or second place winner. Third place went to Dave Wertheimer and Shawn Montano of KWGN-TV in Denver for “Journey of Hope,” and an honorable mention was given to Jay Jennings, Clay Johnson, and Laura Riddle of WRAL-TV in Raleigh for “The Other North Carolina.”

Best Of Photojournalism judges for the Television categories this year include returning BOP TV contest chair Merry Murray, a photojournalist for KSNW-TV in Wichita, KS; Ram Guzman of KTVT-TV in Dallas/Fort Worth, TX, the BOP contest chair for the TV Editing categories; Terry Bulger of WSMV-TV in Nashville, TN; Brad Ingram of WGHP-TV in High Point, NC; Scott Jensen of KTUU-TV in Anchorage, AK; Jon Knorr of KOMO-TV in Seattle, WA; Terry Lovell, a freelance television editor in Raleigh, NC; Shane McEachern, of WTXF-TV in Philadelphia, PA; and Tom Sharkey, of WWSB-TV in Sarasota, FL.

Their full bios and headshots are online at the bottom of the page here.

The Best Of Photojournalism is sponsored by Canon, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, and the National Press Photographers Association.

The judges live daily Blog, including updated winners, is online here.

The winning videos are online here.

A message from Russ Kendall, Director, NPPA Region 11

New Region 11 Web site

It’s hard not to feel somewhat powerless in these crazy, dark times of change and decline. In the best-case scenario our jobs have changed, likely not for the better. In the worst case, we’ve lost our jobs. This malaise affects us all.

So much of what’s happening to our jobs and our lives is out of our control, in the hands of people whose shoes probably cost more than what most of us make in a week. The threat of ‘more and worse’ hangs ever over our heads like a Damoclean sword. Remember last year’s call to do more with less? Now it feels as if we’re being asked to do even more with nothing at all.

So what can we do about it?

We can focus on the good work we’re still able to do. We can take pride in conducting ourselves like the professionals we are. We can love and cherish our families and our friends.

We can also communicate better with each other, share job and freelance info, news about the Region, blow off some steam by commiserating with each other over our shared pain. Heck, there might even be some good news to share about awards won, great pictures made, projects completed, trips taken, college degrees earned.

The Region 11 website should be a conduit for frequently updated information to pass back and forth in all directions. It should provide a way for visual journalists in Anchorage to communicate with those in Portland and Seattle and Spokane and Vancouver and Yakima and Bend and every other big and little town in the great Pacific Northwest and beyond. Here in Bellingham, we desperately want to know what’s going on in our region. And there’s stuff we want to share with you.

But how?

To that end, TJ Mullinax, Associate Director of Region 11, Mikael Kjellström, our Webmaster, and I have been working for months on a redesign of this Web site, www.nppa11.org. We wanted to make the site more interesting, more helpful, and more important than before.

Besides including a constantly updated newsfeed, we hope to post the portfolios of the 2008 Region 11 Still and Video Photographers of the Year. We’re thinking about creating a place where people can advertise their unwanted gear as well as a regional “Find a Photographer” service. We hope to create a Region 11 blog. We also plan to create a video library of speakers and workshops. We’re going to be interviewing and writing about Region 11 members, posting video from those interviews.

So please, take a couple minutes to take a quick look around the site. Let me know what you like, what you don’t like, what we need to add and what we need to remove. The new site is not quite ready, and there’s much more to be done, so think of this as a soft launch with all of you as the beta testers.

Together we’re better and stronger. Let’s start the regional conversation.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Russ Kendall
Director, NPPA Region 11
Co-director, Bellingham Visual Journalism Conference
Picture editor, Bellingham Herald
russkendall@aol.com

Belo Corp. Cutting 500

DALLAS, TX (January 30, 2009) – Blaming the “persistent” decline in advertising revenues in the newspaper industry and all media, and citing a “significant cost initiative” to preserve cash, A.H. Belo Corporation chief executive officer Robert Decherd today said that as many as 500 more jobs will be cut across the company.

Belo owns the Northwest television stations KING in Seattle Wash., KGW in Portland, Ore., Northwest Cable News, The Dallas Morning News and the Denton Record-Chronicle in Texas, the Providence Journal in Rhode Island, and The Press-Enterprise in California.

Decherd also said the company will make immediate moves to generate cash internally as well as take steps to preserve the cash Belo has on hand.

Some of these steps include suspending the Belo Savings Plan match for employees for 2009, preserving about $5.5 million in cash for the company annually, and reducing the amount the company reimburses employees monthly for wireless devices to $35, saving about $200,000 for the year.

Free parking is also gone for Dallas employees. Beginning May 1, Belo employees who park in company-owned lots will be charged $40, and those who park in the Belo Building’s lot will see their parking fees increase from $40 to $70 monthly.

In a bit of possible foreshadowing of what may yet come, Decherd told Belo employees in a memo today that while other newspapers have announced pay cuts and unpaid furloughs that he believes that “these actions are not best for A.H. Belo at this time” – and yet “we recognize that all means of preserving cash need to be explored.”

from nppa.org

Next Page »