End of an Era

Media in general is in a state of massive upheaval. Markets are dying and new ones are advancing. Now more than ever, following the status quo and not being an innovator, an iconoclast, is bad business.

Neil Burgess, head of NB Pictures, former head of Magnum Photos in New York and Magnum London, and twice former chairman of World Press Photo, wrote an opinion piece in the EPUK where he talks about the death of photojournalism.

"Magazines and newspapers are no longer putting any money into photojournalism. They will commission a portrait or two. They might send a photographer off with a writer to illustrate the writer’s story, but they no longer fund photojournalism. They no longer fund photo-reportage. They only fund photo illustration."

"We should stop talking about photojournalists altogether...A few are kept on to help provide ‘illustration’ and decorative visual work, but there is simply no visual journalism or reportage being supported by so called news organisations."

"Look at TIME and Newsweek, they are a joke. I cannot imagine anyone buys them on the news-stand anymore. I suspect they only still exist because thousands of schools, and libraries and colleges around the world have forgotten to cancel their subscriptions."

While it's a time of great distress for a lot of professional media makers, it's also a time of great opportunity, because there's an opening to get in on the ground floor with a lot of the emerging markets. If TIME and Newsweek are a joke, clearly the way professionals need to do business has to change.

Hugh MacLeod, in his book "Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity," says:

"Your plan for getting your work out there has to be as original as the actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new market. There's no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one."

Amen.