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THEORY: "Susan Sontag - On Photography" "Susan Sontag - On Photography" By: David L. Jacobs, Afterimage, Sunday, March 1 1998 The initial critical reception of Susan Sontag's On Photography (1977) is one of the most extraordinary events in the history of photography and cultural criticism. No other photography book, not even The Family of Man (1955), which sold four million copies before finally going out of print in 1978, received a wider range of press coverage than On Photography. The scores of reviews of Sontag's book extended not only across the spectrum of specialized photography and art magazines - that is, from Popular Photography to Artforum - but also across an expansive range of general-interest and intellectual periodicals from the Christian Science Monitor to the Village Voice, from Esquire to Encounter, and from the Saturday Review to the Antioch Review. What's more, On Photography won the National Book Critics' Circle Award for 1977 and was selected among the top 20 books of 1977 by the editors of the New York Times Book Review.

The photograph, framed without margins and behind Plexiglas, is just under four and a half feet high by nearly nine and a half feet wide. Its title is A Lunch at the Belvedere, and it depicts an actual event that took place at the Hotel Belvedere in Davos, Switzerland, during the World Economic Forum of 2004. The lunch was hosted by Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan, whose guest of honor was the famous American financier-philanthropist George Soros. The diners, eleven men, sit facing the viewer--though none looks toward the camera--on the far side of a long table that runs the full width of the picture. (To take this in the viewer must begin his or her engagement with the work by standing ten or twelve feet back from it.) One has the impression that the lunch has not properly begun. For the most part the men are talking quietly with one another, and to the left a chic young woman, possibly a waitress, bends over the table as if serving or taking an order. The image is by far most arresting toward its center, where the elegant, dark-haired and mustached Musharraf is shown talking earnestly to Soros, while a third man, to Soros's left, listens in. And what is arresting is precisely the extraordinary accuracy, as it seems to one, of the depiction of an entire range of small-scale, unemphatic, but nevertheless intensely photogenic gestures, expressions, postures, and pieces of behavior: for example, the small-scale gesture--scarcely more than a tensing of the wrist--of Musharraf's partly open left hand as he makes his point; the downward cast of Soros's head and his inscrutable, almost sullen-seeming facial expression as he plays with something on the tablecloth with his left hand; and the diffident demeanor of the third man who sits with both elbows on the table and his hands clasped.

'Meta-reading': the generational differences in consuming news May 13th, 2009Posted by Judith Townend in Events, Online Journalism, Social media and blogging Turi Munthe, CEO and founder of the citizen journalism site, Demotix, shared an interesting thought with participants of the Voices Online Blogging Conference on Monday. The young Demotix interns consume news differently from the way he does. He elaborated to Journalism.co.uk after the panel. 'Meta-reading': "There is a generational split, but not in the way everyone imagines. It's much more recent than that," he said. People only ten years younger - he is in his 30s - consume news differently from the way he does, Munthe told Journalism.co.uk. The interns in the office ('who play a hugely important role: they're regional editors and they get properly stuck into what we do') read slightly differently, he said. "They are getting the Twitter feeds, and the blog posts, and the Facebook messaging and the free papers, and everything else, and are very happy with it. Much more happy with it than I am." "Essentially, they process information differently. It's a 'meta-reading'. It's not about individual brands. They are fully aware of all the back-stories of all the stories they're getting," he says. It's a 'degree of sophistication,' he said, 'which reads the interests behind the news as an integral part of the news'.

Center for Citizen Media Rotating Header Image The Decline (and Maybe Demise) of the Professional Photojournalist Dec 4th, 2006 by Dan Gillmor. The rise of the citizen journalist is not a new phenomenon. People have been witnessing and taking pictures of notable events for a long, long time. And they've been selling them to traditional news organizations just as long.

"This past weekend, the horrific image of a young woman dying on camera in the midst of a protest in Iran turned into a rallying cry for many of those participating/following the events in Iran. In 40 seconds of grainy footage (shot on what appears to be the mobile phone of a passerby), we first see the wounded woman - now identified as Neda - as she falls to the floor into a pool of blood. Two men come to her aid and try to stem the bleeding from her chest. The person filming moves in closer and Neda turns towards the camera, seeming to fix her gaze on the lens pointed at her. A few seconds pass, the bleeding becomes more profuse, and Neda falls unconscious, passing away within moments. "

"Twittering the News: The emergence of ambient journalism My paper looks at new para-journalism forms such as micro-blogging as "awareness systems". For this I have drawn from literature on new communications technologies in computer science to suggest that these broad, asynchronous, lightweight and always-on systems are enabling citizens to maintain a mental model of news and events around them, giving rise to awareness systems that paper describes as ambient journalism."

"The past decade has seen dramatic changes in the information and communication environment. Parameters as to who has access to information gathering and dissemination have altered rapidly and irreversibly. Civil society actors such as NGOs and advocacy networks are becoming increasingly significant players as the traditional news media model is threatened by shrinking audiences, the availability of free content online, and the declining fortunes of mainstream media. To what extent do NGOs take on functions as information intermediaries, working in cooperation with, or even in the stead of, traditional news organizations? Are we witnessing a general trend, or do NGOs fulfill specific purposes in times of crisis or critical events that focus attention on a specific (international) topic? And what are the consequences of this for the fields of advocacy and journalism? This essay series, organized by the Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS) at the Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania, in cooperation with the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, seeks to examine these critical questions from a variety of perspectives, and encourage discussion and deliberation on what these changes mean for NGOs, traditional media outlets, news consumers, and society as a whole."

"Protect Yourself as a Photographer - Legal Aspects to Consider This article series is about the legal aspects that a photographer must think about when (s)he intends to make a business out of photography. Including information on legal documents, such as the model release form and photo contracts."

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Citizen Journalism

"Citizen Journalism and the BBC '… when major events occur, the public can offer us as much new information as we are able to broadcast to them. From now on, news coverage is a partnership.' By Richard Sambrook On the day of the London bombings, the BBC News's Web site used images sent to them by citizens who were affected by the attacks. On the site, people could learn how to submit their video, photographs and words for use by the BBC. "

Guardian article about Scoopt. Describes failings of Scoopt, highest purchase price Scoopt received-£2000, McRae states that BBC robbed Scoopt of income.

Citizenside: is there a future for citizen photojournalism? Posted by Emma Heald on February 18, 2009 at 10:20 AM Following Getty Images' decision to close its citizen journalism arm Scoopt, the venture's founder Kyle MacRae explained in an interview why "the dedicated cit-j agency model isn't the way forward." His reasoning was that even though many members of the public may well be on a breaking news scene with a camera, it is extremely unlikely that they will be a member of a citizen photojournalism organisation. But has Citizenside, a small, young company based in Paris, found a solution? The Editors Weblog spoke to co-founder Matthieu Stefani and editor-in-chief Aurélien Viers about Citizenside's work and the way they see the future of citizen photojournalism.

posted by Nelly Akhmetova

Following Getty Images' decision to close its citizen journalism arm Scoopt, the venture's founder Kyle MacRae explained in an interview why "the dedicated cit-j agency model isn't the way forward." His reasoning was that even though many members of the public may well be on a breaking news scene with a camera, it is extremely unlikely that they will be a member of a citizen photojournalism organisation.

NowPublic is a participatory news network which mobilizes an army of reporters to cover the events that define our world. In twelve short months, the company has become one of the fastest growing news organizations with thousands of reporters in over 140 countries. During Hurricane Katrina, NowPublic had more reporters in the affected area than most news organizations have on their entire staff. In 2007, TIME Magazine named NowPublic one of the 50 Coolest Websites and in 2009, the site was nominated for an Emmy for Advanced Technology.