Journalists everywhere are suffering over the agonizing death of our long-held models of print media, but a comparison of this year’s National Press Photographers Association Photojournalism Summit, which ended this weekend in Portland, to NPPA’s event last summer in Tampa, reveals one group of professionals who have rapidly leapt from denial to acceptance, bypassing the other stages of grief. #

Evidence of the mass buy-in for multimedia was overwhelming, beginning with the fact that a multimedia track was added alongside the traditional still photography and television tracks, and reinforced when the meeting space for multimedia sessions became so overcrowded changes had to be made mid-workshop to move all multimedia to the largest ballroom. This represented an enormous philosophical shift compared to last year when the still vs. motion/sound debate left many anchored in tradition. Hats off to NPPA and multimedia organizer Seth Gitner from Roanoke.com for getting this very, very right. A highlight of the event that was enrollment limited was the four-day multimedia immersion program that attracted an amazing range of participants including folks like Pulitzer-Prize winning L.A. Times photojournalist Carolyn Cole. You can take a look at the work the immersion students created here. #

I took away a handful of themes from the summit, which are, in no particular order:

• Compelling reasons to believe, as if we needed more, that the print versions of newspapers and magazines are going out of business. #

• What will photography be like in 10 years? “Ten years from now there will not be a single still photographer shooting photojournalism. No, probably five years.” This from 70-year-old photojournalism legend and DigitalJournalist.org publisher Dirck Halstead. #

• Visual storytelling is now the king of content. First, this translates to photo/visual folks as job security in an environment where jobs are disappearing – though those jobs may not remain with the same employers. More importantly, it presents an opportunity for visual journalists to impact lives with the power that only multiple layers of information included in multimedia can provide. #

• Newspaper web video is critical to publishers. Why? Aside from their potential to be tremendous storytelling vehicles, web video offers a couple of valuable assets to their companies. First, as the metrics for measuring audience consumption of web media moves from page views to user’s time spent on site, video serves as an appealing hook to keep viewers with you. Secondly, since videos can be easily measured and monetized with the sale of intro commercials, they serve as a great revenue source. #

• Those companies (and should we suggest college media operations) that took big risks by jumping into the deep end of digital media early by investing big bucks on equipment, training, and the indulgences of staff time for learning and experimenting, are now way out in front of the pack in all measures of success in the new media frontier. Count among them WashingtonPost.com, DallasMorningNews, Roanoke.com, and others. #

• An era is clearly ending, so attitude is more important than ever. Smiley Pool who is now photo coach at the Houston Chronicle articulated this most eloquently when recounting a retrospective of his career. Pool and his fellow photojournalists were called to a meeting with the publisher of the Dallas Morning News at which a video camera was placed on the table and they were told, in so many words, to learn and adopt this new tool immediately or find employment elsewhere. Leaving the meeting, Pool said he was greeted by a fellow employee displaying on her monitor a photograph of Pool and his colleagues in front of Columbia University from a few days before as they held the Pulitzer Prize awarded to them for Katrina coverage. So this is how a career, a profession ends, Smiley said he thought. Then, he said he realized that the technological changes only marked the end of a chapter in a long career of chapters. The question, for him and for all photojournalists, is do you turn the page and keep writing, or is it the end of the book? #

• As if there weren’t enough threats for media companies to worry about, the fabulous work of Brian Storm and MediaStorm illustrated the potential for talented content producers to leapfrog past traditional media channels and have their work distributed to market in exciting new ways. #

• Do you want to be employed as a photojournalist? You must learn to produce and edit audio and video. This simple fact could not be more absolute. Representatives from the titans of the industry testified one-by-one that their organizations will never hire another photographer who does not possess these skills. #

• Richard Koci Hernandez, deputy director of multimedia and photography for The San Jose Mercury News is still the king of the motivational evangelists who can convince anyone – anyone – that it’s possible to start producing multimedia at your newspaper for $100 and some commitment. Better still, Hernandez is spreading the good word to all who will listen for free at his wonderful site multimediashooter.com. #

Those who attended this year’s summit were treated to an unprecedented array of amazing presenters. Tom Kennedy and Andrew deVigal explained and showed how the big guns at Washingtonpost.com and The New York Times are living up to the marquis status or their nameplates. There was a terrific mix of large and small market practitioners, experts from academia, and at least four Pulitzer winners that I noticed, and probably more in the audience. You can no doubt find more reporting on the summit elsewhere on the web, so I’ll end with some excerpts from presentations by the phenomenal David Leeson from The Dallas Morning News, who continues to champion the potential of video despite outposts of resistance from the old guard. Also, some selected comments from Rich Beckman, professor of multimedia design & production at the University of North Carolina. Beckman’s very direct perspective on where we are and where we need to be was only slightly more stunning and eye-opening than was the incredibly sophisticated and astonishingly professional work created by his students. It’s difficult to resist the urge to take an extended leave of absence and try like hell to be admitted to UNC for a second shot at undergraduate school. #

Here first, is Leeson. (note: Richard Hernandez has a excerpted podcast of Leeson’s presentation here): #

It’s not about our tools, its not about our techniques, it not about the rules, its about what those rules lead us to. It’s about learning a visual language to speak eloquently to make a difference in our world. #

I’m nervous about talking about frame grabs especially after my recent sportsshooter column. I had no earthly idea it would be such a tough sell to my industry. I was completely blown away by it. I just thought people would say, ‘Oh that is majorly cool, wow, we have a camera now that will provide us with great stills, audio, and motion, all in one unit at the same time. This is amazing. It’s a powerful communications tool, let’s harness it, let’s learn how to use it, let’s establish a great foundation for great photojournalism, let’s bring our traditions and our ethics to this, let’s make this work and let’s build upon it because this is our direction.’ Instead, this is what people thought: ‘You’re trying to take my 35mm dSLR away from me.’ #

You have to understand that I deeply and passionately love my profession and the 35mm camera. I understand that attraction to that tool, I have the same attraction, but there is something greater out there and I think we would all agree upon this, that it’s not the tool, but what the tool represents in the hearts and minds of the people who look at those images made by that tool, and what it can do to change and shape our worlds and the attitudes and thoughts that can bridge entire gaps, create icons for entire chapters of history, the amazing power within the image, brought about by a tool, and it’s pretty easy to get attracted to the tool and not what it’s doing. #

I was at the Eddie Adams workshop and had this young photographer come to me and show me his portfolio, great stuff, but I was really sad, because I was looking at a room of 100 young, really highly talented young still photographers, and most of them without jobs, and a whole bunch of them not even considering video. #

So, he sat down and said, ‘I don’t get it, I don’t get the video thing, and I really don’t get the print grab thing.’ #

I said, look at this great photo you shot. If I were standing right next to you using a video camera and I could make an image that looks almost identical in every way to yours, except a slight difference of angle. It’s the same moment, everything is the same, and we both make a print of it, and I hold it up next to yours, tell me how it’s different. #

‘It just is.’ #

I said, no, it’s your prejudice, its your attraction to the tool and to your process that makes you feel that way, and you should be attracted to what you’re communicating, about visual communication. #

on our preparedness: #

When we look at multimedia in our industry, we’re really looking at a pathetic picture right now, and we’ve all got to accept that reality and understand maybe for the first time in a long, long time, we’re pretty poorly equipped to be doing our jobs in the new realm of multimedia and that’s really something pretty serious. #

The key is we have new tools and we can do better journalism and what could be better than that? This room is full and that’s great, but we should be doing this in auditoriums, not little rooms because we really need to get moving on this stuff. We’ve been slow as an industry to adjusting, adapting adopting new technology, and we’ve been slow in my industry, the academy, in terms of putting out enough young journalists who can do this stuff. #

We need to address this. You guys are going to need to retrain yourselves. The quickest path to move up in the newsroom today is to learn these skills and take the lead. Everyone’s searching for someone in their newsroom to take the lead. #

I’m so tired of going to websites and spending the first 15 minutes searching for your multimedia, those that have multimedia. I can’t find it. It’s got to be up front, easy for your user to find because they are not going to search for it. And, it has to work. There is so much stuff on the web that doesn’t work, or that I have to download players or something to make it work. #

We are an industry that has highly trained experienced photojournalists who’ve spent 10, 20, 30 years finely honing their craft, and what do we do? We give them an audio recorder, teach them how to turn it on, then send them out in the field and tell them, ‘now you’re an audio reporter.’ You’ve got to have more respect for audio storytelling than that. The very best audio storytellers have the same dedication, the same passion, the same training the same experience as photojournalists. Imagine if we handed them cameras and showed them how to just push the button and sent them out in the field. #

An average teenage kid has an iPod, PSP, three computers in the house, a cell phone, two or three email addresses, and spend much more time in front of computer than in front of TV. For the first time last year children ages 13-18 spend more time in front of computers than watching TV. That’s our future audience, and they chat incessantly, they’re comfortable with technology, they know how to use all the tools, in middle school they’re learning Flash, Photoshop and Dreamweaver… this is the kind of person that’s coming up in society. #

We’re looking at an audience that’s grown up their entire lives with computers, never been without them and everthing has to do with the Internet, and that’s where we publish. #

You need to understand what their standards are. We’re not well equipped, we don’t have the personnel and we don’t have the skills, but think about your audience, their standard for graphics is high-end video games, that’s their expectation. They get better quality on their handheld PSP than they do on most of your sites, in terms of graphics, in terms of animation and in terms of interactivity and in terms of it being intuitive. #

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