Thanks to Jeff Jarvis for pointing out this post from a blog called What’s Next: Innovations in Newspapers:
Juan Antonio Giner asks where you can find the most photos of the Manhattan plane crash and here’s the answer. Flickr, he says, is the new Life magazine. If I were the photo editor or a producer at a news site, I’d perform the valuable service of digging through the many pictures there to find the best.
I’m not sure whether the various photo sizes available on Flickr are sufficient for quality newspaper publication (although I now see that the original size uploaded is an option for download.) But that’s more a problem for newspaper than anything wrong with the photos. Newspapers would just need to pick what fits their medium.
For a newspaper web site, or a blog, it’s really easy to pick a photo, download, and post…or even more immediately, just link to the photo on Flickr and include in the site, like this:
Professional photographers take scores or hundreds of pictures to find one suitable for publication. On Flickr, hundreds of pictures of a big event will likely be posted…so maybe more sifting of the “amateur” photos will be required, but Flickr makes it possible to have photos of some events that otherwise would be missed.
Advice to news organizations: If an event is predictable (Presidential speech, press conference, sporting event, or anything that cann make the AP daybook), send your best professional photographer. But for breaking news, take advantage of the fact that millions of people have digital cameras and camera phones, and can capture events you can’t reach.
Technorati: NYC, Plane Crash, Flickr
