World Press Photo: Smile, it is an order

At the site of a Second World War concentration camp, a tourist wears a T-shirt that says, Smile, it is an order!.

A scene of such juxtaposition provokes a repelling reaction. Its observer, gifted with creative skills, crafts his quasi-instantaneous reflection into an award-winning series of captivating pictures.

History of a picture
Dutch photographer Roger Cremers is driven to capture emotions. He translated his impressions of the surrealist scenes at Auchwitz-Birkenau into Preserving Memory: Visitors at the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, a series of images for which he was awarded the 2009 World Press Photo first prize in the category for Arts and Entertainments Stories.

Cremers and I discussed one of his many journeys to Poland in 2002 so I could begin to understand the origin of his award-winning pictures. From the moment he saw that tourist in the Smile…! T-shirt, the vision was embedded in his memory.

When he returned to Auschwitz in 2007, he was astonished to find people acting as if “they were in a museum.” That was the moment when “everything came together” for him, he expressed to me.

In the artistic world, a good masterpiece may be conceived long before it becomes reality. It is fascinating how humans can traverse back in time to embrace again a feeling they’ve left in the past. An example of this capacity that comes to my mind is the Spanish cinema director Pedro Almodovar´s last film: Los Abrazos Rotos (in English, Broken Embraces). Although filmed only recently, it started to take shape in his mind as he was contemplating a picture of a beach in Lanzarote, taken from his window some years ago.

Cremers, a Dutchman, decided in 2008 to revisit the grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum to immortalise with his camera lens what he perceived to be inappropriate in a place that lives as a testimony to the atrocities once committed there.

Although Auschwitz is in the background, Preserving Memory’s subject is not the camp but the visitors’ behaviour. It is a commentary about people who wonder around the old and rusty facilities with a lack of respect and consideration.

After spending a whole week there, Rogers described to me his feeling of “shame for people’s attitude,” particularly those who acted as if they were just “having the day off” in a tourist attraction.

What could have been a roll of emotional and dramatic scenes turned out to be a series of pictures taken in an ironic fashion.

“It is like this magic surrealism of reality and the kind of different world we have created,” said Micaela Pereira, manager of Exhibitions
Planning and Logistics at World Press Photo, before the opening of the 2009 World Press Photo exhibition held at the Centre Ceramique in Maastricht between 6 and 29 November.

A walk through the snapshots
Images depicting the ravages of war, like shots of Palestinian protesters taking cover behind an olive tree from tear gas fired by Israeli troops, and photographs of natural catastrophes, like the devastating earthquake that killed 70,000 people in central China, are extensively represented in this year’s World Press Photo exhibition.

In addition to shocking and frightening scenes, though, there are also light-hearted scenes that enlighten, delight, amaze and exhilarate. Solitary snow leopards frolic in the Indian Himalayan; senator Barack Obama does chin-ups before giving a speech during his electoral campaign. Material wealth of Moldovan and Romanian families is demonstrated in one wing of the exhibit while the comical expressions of athletes in the diving competition of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games amuse around the corner.

This combination of displayed realities is part of a travelling exhibition that visits around 100 cities around the world to be seen by over 2 million visitors. The main objective of the exhibit is to stimulate press photography while supporting press freedom. The World Press Photo competition manages to achieve this while dazzling both the general and the photo-journalistic audience. The secret is that all photos can evoke an emotion whether or not the viewer belongs to the field of photography.

Prize-winning photographs are the result of a complex selection process that kicks off with judges looking at, in the case of the last edition, 96,268 submitted photographs. The 2009 edition has nearly had a 20 percent increase over last year, representing the work of 5,508 photographers from 124 countries.

Photographers becoming editors
It is essential for photographers to have done editing work before sending their pictures to the contest. Since the jury members have only one second to look at every single photo, a winning image must make an instant deep and powerful impact on the jury members. For that reason, photographers “must make sure their first image is really strong,” Pereira said.

Traditionally, shooting and the editing were two separate processes. These have now become one thanks, to advanced technology development. Today, chairman of 2010 Word Press Photo contest, Ayperi Karabuda Ecer asserts “a new generation should totally embrace editing as an integrated element of the photographic process,” because it can “turn unnoticed pictures into key elements.”

It is for this reason that professional photographers are also bound to be the editors of their work.

Photojournalism in good form?
Quality, strength and power of the exhibited images contrast with the fragile state in which photojournalism lives at this very moment.

On one hand, there have never been more photographs on display around the world, thanks partly to the wide access on-line. On the other hand, the profession is losing its printed outlets and according to Ecer, is “struggling in between economic models where there is a big lack of assignments” from big publications like the National Geographic or Time Magazine.

As a consequence of that, stories seem to be getting shorter. As Pereira said, now is a time when “it is easier to make a snapshot than send someone to make a long story.”

The economic crisis facing the whole world did not go unnoticed by the 2009 World Press Photo jury.

“It’s link to reality, or, better said, realities, is crucial,” Ecer said. Therefore the black-and-white image awarded as World Press Photo of the Year 2008, by US photographer Anthony Suau, depicts an armed officer entering a home in Cleveland, Ohio, to enforce an eviction order following mortgage foreclosure. I, for one, was confused when I saw in this photograph war and conflict in their classic sense. I did not see right away the aftermath of a housing problem.

Despite the financial crisis and proliferation of current technology, being able to “create” nearly any real situation without the work of the photographer, this author believes photojournalism will prevail. It will do so because the human touch and the journalistic content cannot be replaced by any cutting-edge computer software or an amateur´s stroke of luck.
To this respect, Cremers said “everybody can take pictures, but a good photojournalist has something to say. He thinks about his work and he has a message.” Consequently it should be emphasised that reality does not unfold itself, but it needs the help of these professionals.

The medium is not the message
At the conclusion of her visit to this exhibition, this author is not sure whether a picture is really worth a thousand words. But she leaves the venue with the feeling of having read dozens of last year’s newspapers and having watched a 10-hour news programme. She concludes by asking herself: Does an article complement a photographer’s image or is it is the picture itself that accompanies the information?

I would rather leave it in the words of Roger Cremers: “You are a journalist with a pen and I am a journalist with a camera.”

European journalists: Comrades in Arms?

Grim announcements catch our attention daily as we peruse the pages of the mainstream daily press. Standard reading may include bits like:

The Dutch newspaper group Telegraaf Media Group (TMG) announced the closure at the end of the year of its Sunday edition, De Telegraaf, due to drop of advertising revenue….
The guardian.co.uk is looking for a handful of paid bloggers with journalistic qualifications to launch a local news project in a small number of locations to help cover community news…

The New York Times announced on Monday, 19 October, plans to cut 100 jobs from its newsroom, about 8 percent of its news staff, by the end of the year.

An assistant editor is gearing up for a new life as a driving instructor, bringing to a halt a 32-year career in regional newspapers.

But more disheartening than dwindling newspaper circulations and hundreds of job losses is watching colleagues voluntarily hanging up their notebooks to try their luck in other sectors.

Building camaraderie
The harsh situation journalists face today has prompted attempts to build a sense of solidarity among colleagues. Members of the media sector, both in print and audiovisual, are organising campaigns and unions to debate strategies in the face of redundancies, declining salaries and bad work conditions. Perhaps this climate may not have resulted without such upheaval.

A study launched by journalism researchers at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) in Preston, England, unites academics with the staff at Journalism.co.uk in the pursuit of compiling data from former UK newspaper journalists. The study examines what happens with in their professional lives after leaving the newsroom.

The questionnaire, designed at UCLAN, wants to “to know their experiences of being laid off , how they have adapted in their personal and professional lives since leaving the newspaper, and also look at the gaps that the layoffs leave in the industry: gaps in experience, perspective and professional memory,” said Judith Townend, news reporter at Journalism.co.uk.

The survey is being carried out with the assumption that “journalists are under severe strain.” As such, Journalism.co.uk considers “the loss of manpower and its impact on journalism in the public interest an issue that has to be addressed.”

To portray the struggle British journalists face it would be appropriate here to report that on the same day my interview with Judith Townend was conducted, 40 redundancies were announced at Trinity Mirror’s Birmingham division.

Research will certainly not enable laid-off journalists to return to their jobs. But it will be a tool for building a sense of self-interested behaviour among remaining reporters. This group will need to pool knowledge to deal with cuts collectively.

Townend said the study will “ help the wider industry and also UCLAN’s work with newsroom managers and the curriculum on offer to would-be journalists at UCLAN.”

Online social networks have also become a meeting point for some media professionals seeking to share their experiences and deliver their messages. Such is the case of the Spanish group Por la Dignidad de los Periodistas y los Trabajadores de los Medios (For the Dignity of Journalists and Media Professionals), created on Facebook in December, 2008, as a direct response to the loss of 1,500 journalism jobs within the first six months of 2008. This group assembles journalists, students, and unemployed professionals who circulate ideas for dignifying our profession and fighting the crisis affecting it.

The rise of these associations should not be depicted as a bizarre trend in a country like Spain where journalism is a wholly unregulated sector. In Spain, labor rights have historically been introduced through collective agreements and bargaining processes. Affiliation with trade unions has rising in the last decades in Spain but membership does not reach the levels of southern European countries like Portugal or Italy, where union affiliation is on average 80 percent.

Building a strong professional sense of camaraderie among practitioners of our profession should be a major concentration; it is especially so during an era in which media moguls are leading a transition that does not prioritise the defence of quality journalism.

Camaraderie was the objective pursued at the annual meeting of the European Federation of Journalists, held 17 May, 2009, in Varna, Bulgaria. This conference joined together leaders of unions and associations from 25 European countries and concluded with the declaration, Journalism in the Vanguard of Change

Change indeed. These are bruising times for our vocation. Starting halfway through 2008 and up through 2009 there have been media industry jobs dismissals all over Europe. To cite but a few numbers: around 1,000 in Germany and 3,000 between the UK and Spain. These numbers do not include the employ of freelancers, widespread all over the European Union.

Facing the crisis
Cash-strapped media companies strive to find new ways to lower expenses to gain ground on advertising losses and dwindling circulations. This makes the search for new revenue streams all the more compelling for any journalist.

If one observes this search we come across ideas like the one adopted by The Times and the Sunday Times, which decided to launch a membership scheme enticing their readers with special offers and access to exclusive events in return for a £50 pound annual fee. This measure comes a few months after Rupert Murdoch announced the introduction of charges to access all his news websites next summer due to a huge losses incurred by in his global empire.

A different and original business model appears on stage Niiu, the first “personalised” newspaper in Europe due to kick off in Germany on 16 November. Niiu will not only provide news from major German titles like Handelsblatt, Bild and Tagesspiegel, or foreign ones such as the Herald Tribune and the New York Times; it will also include major blogs and Internet news sources. Customers, mainly a young audience, will be able to choose the length of their customised paper. It can range from only eight pages to 60 pages per day.

In the middle of this business crusade journalists must stay true to the best tools we have to cope with the media crisis: quality stories and respect for the unchangeable principles that have always buttressed our profession. Neither a long-term contract in one of the worldwide communications companies nor our powerful editor in chief makes us be a steady journalist; rather we go forward in fidelity to and partnership with our readers, viewers and listeners.

Goodbye to advertising on Spanish state TV

Autumn of 2009 will stick with every Spaniard as the season when its capital city lost out in its second consecutive bid to host the Olympic Games, this time to Rio de Janeiro. It’s also when Spanish Public Television, TVE, bids farewell to advertising after more than 50 years on the air.

Some European states, including Britain and France, charge citizens a TV licence fee. Spain has no licence fee.

But the Spanish government aims to provide a public service station. It is hard to believe the government will be able to do this without the help of commercial advertisers. Spain’s two public channels, TVE1 and TVE2, currently broadcast 10 minutes of advertising per hour, which translated to 400,000 adverts last year.

The National Broadcasting Radio & Television RTVE, Financing Law came into force on 1 September, 2009. TVE may no longer contract any space for publicity. This means there will be “a significant reduction of advertising space in the coming months of October, November and December,” said Luis Fernández, president of RTVE.

By January, 2010, advertising must be wiped from Spanish state television.

Commission clash
The European Commission voiced concern about the volume of adverts on Spanish state television in July, 2007, when it instructed Spain to cut down on TV commercials or be taken to the European Court of Justice in the violation of the Television Without Frontiers Directive. The 20-year-old directive seeks to harmonise broadcasting regulations across the 27-nation bloc.

The Commission’s concern in ’07 stemmed from infringements of a 12-minute limit on spot advertising and teleshopping.

In Spain the limit was established at 17 minutes per hour.

According to the Commission, the terms under which Spain defined the “advertising spot” were too narrow. Consequently, ad formats such as tele-promotions or microslots were included in Spain’s “advertising spot” concept.

The Commission forwarded a letter of formal notice to the Spanish authorities. It read:

“...Spain has not taken the requisite measures to ensure effective compliance with all the provisions of the Directive. Everything must now be done to remedy this situation and to establish a genuine internal market for audiovisual media services….”

The Spanish government did not agree to change its interpretation of what constitutes an “advertising spot.”

Fast forward two years, though, and the owners of privately-held channels are rubbing their hands together in anticipation of the advertising axe falling on the public broadcaster: In 2008 ad revenues at public channels totalled 557 million euro.

Complex broadcasting
Spain is a decentralised country. Two public broadcasting systems coexist: a national broadcasting television station, TVE, and many autonomic channels that can be watched only in their respective territories known as Autonomous Communities. TVE, founded in 1937, consists of two stations: TVE1, targeting a general audience, and TVE2, which offers cultural programming as well as sports competitions.

The regional channels are modelled after TVE: one is directed to a broad audience and the other to a more cultural customer. Moreover, in Autonomous Communities with official language besides Spanish, such as the Basque Country or Catalonia, regional channels transmit in their co-official languages. Although publicly and privately founded as well, these territorial networks will not automatically be effected by the new law. Their own legislative and administrative competences impact this issue.

This is why discussions about adopting new initiatives must always be held in a context of political and administrative decentralisation.

New funding system
How will Spain pay for non-commercial public state television?

To compensate for an annual loss of publicity revenue (foreseen to be around 478m euro in 2009) Spanish authorities have established a three-way solution.

• Privately-owned commercial stations must provide the country’s two public television stations with 3 percent of their annual gross income, which will raise an estimated 140m euros.


• Telecommunications providers also offering audiovisual services (Telefonica, Vodafone, Orange and others) shall give the equivalent of 0.9 percent of their benefits, which translates to 290m euro.


• The third financing source will come from taxes that all operators (from radio stations to telephone companies) have to pay to be entitled to use a portion of the radio frequency spectrum for broadcasting purposes, which corresponds to 240m euro.


• To complete the 1,200 euro annual budget, state-owned television will contribute 550m euro to RTVE.

Reactions
Privately-owned commercial channels are partially in favour of this plan. They’ll have one competitor less in an era of eroding advertising revenues. On the other hand, they do not feel compelled to fund RTVE budget with a percentage of their publicity income. This tax will join the already existing 5 percent they are required to earmark for the funding of European and Spanish films.

Telecommunications providers have reacted angrily. They are willing to take legal steps claiming it is not fair to require them to fund a sector that has no direct connections with their own duties. They have declared they will charge users 0.9 percent more, which the charge itemised on all telephone bills.

Prominent Internet users call the new financing law an abuse ultimately relying on consumer taxation.

Other critics include TVE’s commercial sponsors. They have proposed at least 12 minutes of advertising an hour. Their argument is that less advertising will mean less consumption, which has already been slashed by the country’s brutal recession.

Questions
How will TVE fill the space previously taken by advertising, considering that only TVE1 currently uses 270 minutes a day?

Will programming be extended by nearly five hours? If so, how? Will the news last 60 minutes instead of the actual 45? Will news shows include self-promotion as does the BBC? Or will reporters produce more in-house series?

Little insight has been given. What we do already know are new obligations TVE will have to follow.

TVE is already forced to air more content on political debate and education, boost children’s programming and give access rights to social agents such as political parties and trade unions. The new public service will have to provide the Spanish cinema industry with 6 percent of its annual budget (at the moment set at 5 percent).

It will have limited access to sporting events, with the exception of the Olympic Games. It will be entitled to invest only up to 10 percent of its yearly expenditure, the equivalent of 120m euro, to buy TV rights for football matches.

The days of lavishing Trash TV are numbered.
No longer we will wonder if we watch it because it is offered or if is offered because we watch it. The new RTVE´s financing law will challenge Spanish state television to demonstrate it is capable of providing the viewers with content fostering the values of democracy, education, pluralism, culture and entertainment.

Reporting from virtual worlds

I am sat onboard a C17 transport airplane after being manhandled by guards into it, my head covered with a black hood, hands tied behind my back and feet restrained while I hear voices telling me to be quiet. Seconds later I am bound and it is time to wait……when the hood is removed I am given a pair of orange jumpsuits to wear as I crouch within a cage. Behind the fence two women, also wearing orange jumpsuits, are watching me. Can I call my parents, can I call my lawyer, what am I here for? No answers are given to me.

These lines were not lifted from the script of a horror movie, but are part of Gone Gitmo, a virtual project from the online world of Second Life.

The journalist and filmmaker Nonny de la Peña created Gone Gitmo together with University of Southern California Interactive Media adjunct professor Peggy Weil. The duo presented the project and its implications for immersive journalism in Amsterdam at Picnic09.

Gone Gitmo is set at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Digital recreation allows visitors, through their avatars (in the test case, a brunette and a blue-haired woman represent De la Peña and Weil) to immerse themselves into the daily real-life horrors of prison life. It’s possible to walk through the experience of military detention in this US prison camp operating, some say, outside of the law.

Virtually accurate?
Gone Gitmo creates a virtual but accurate and true version of this facility and the experience of having a close access to the detainees, military personnel, and lawyers. How can a virtual world be so lifelike? As Nonny de la Peña said, “When your avatar goes into a cage, it is a very visual feeling, beyond watching it in a film, beyond reading it in a newspaper, geography does not matter.”

Weil and de la Peña aim not only to demonstrate that it is possible to mix analogue and digital reality in order to recreate a sense of truth but also to prove that a virtual representation of a system can be as informative and valid as reality itself. Gone Gitmo offers “new tools to expose war crimes and other serious violations of human rights and disseminates this information in real time throughout the world,” Weil said. What’s the potential of this tool be for journalists? Can it help when we have to cover something, in this case Guantanamo Bay prisons, but are denied access? Weil and de la Peña are exploring this idea under the umbrella of “immersive journalism.”

Immersive journalism
The researchers explore how “storytellers” can, using their own leading characters and their own narrative, make use of 3D environments and platforms to create news documentaries that cannot be created with techniques associated with traditional news media.

We are witnessing the emergence of disciplines in the communications field that are generating accepted forms of communicating through the Internet. We, as journalists and communicators, should be aware of them. Products like Gone Gitmo can highlight what is to come with regards to the future journalistic language in digital networks.
The area in which this evolution is most rapidly transpiring is digital infographics: visual representations of information that make the most of these digital platforms.

Strong signals: infographics
In previous years, infographics appeared to readers as fixed and static shapes positioned alongside printing information. In today’s media they have developed into pieces integrating text, images, 3D, sound and an increasing dose of interactivity. This modern communication process does not limit itself to presenting information, but invites the public to immerse themselves in what its being transmitted.

Referring to this term of “immersion” De la Peña and Weil have also created a venture titled IPSRESS, or Induction of Psycho-Somatic Distress in Virtual Reality. They’re delivering firsthand knowledge of what it is like to be a prisoner at a Guantanamo facility. The knowledge consists of a scenario built in immersive virtual reality. It relies on research, on body ownership, to give users the illusion that they are in a cell standing in a stress position while hearing an interrogation going on in the cell next door. The viewer undergoes an illusionary transformation of the physical body, thus perceptually, if not literally, entering the body of the other.

To see the world in first-person but through the perspective of others could be really valuable when it comes to solving conflict situations or discussions about which course of action to pursue in order to achieve difficult tasks.

Toward immersive journalism
The reactions toward these practices among academics and journalists are not unanimous. Some reviewers are of the opinion that these experiences will hook younger readers in a valuable way because immersive journalism not only delivers good news but also good experiences. Others disregard virtual reality tools as mere entertainment that skims the surface of news without any serious journalistic engagement.

Whatever the debate, significant news events demand innovative applications of mass communication tools like Gone Gitmo. Through digital recreation of any scenario, whether involving political or social issues, the aptly named “immersive journalism” can not only help us have a better understanding of it but also raise an awareness and further more, could even stimulate political action.

The use of online interactive journalism in virtual platforms can only complement and extend traditional reporting of professionals in news media and enhance the audiences’ empathy with the information transmitted.

Information, in whichever form, is not meaningful when it is not accompanied by attachment or involvement.

A glimpse at Picnic '09

The tables at Amsterdam’s annual Picnic, a multi-session festival, brim with highbrow speakers. The international platform for creative thinkers involved in media technologies takes place every year in September in a unlikely location, the Westergasfabriek, a former gasworks factory in the city of Amsterdam.

Initially conceived as a space where people working on inspiring and cutting-edge projects could gather, it has turned into a convergence of some of the world’s most well-known entrepreneurs, artists, innovators and scientists collaborating closer to engender a three-day experience packed full of inspiring ideas.

Whether a student, an independent thinker or a professor, the aim of the festival is to foster connections between people, industries and diverse disciplines in order to stimulate creativity, innovation and new business opportunities.

The Picnic09 programme focused on the challenges of financial crisis and climate change concern. Playing upon these themes gave way to showcases for ways to make a positive and noticeable change.

Due to the immense variety of stages, multiplied by the amount of speakers participating, not to mention complementary events and workshops running alongside, it was possible to witness but a few of these.

Keynote speakers
The keynotes speakers were the loudest names attending the event, the influential and high-ranking experts in new media, technology, business and creativity.

To mention just a few:

• Niklas Zeenstrom, founder of KaZaA, Skype and Joost. He detailed the imperative and required tools that assisted him to become a successful entrepreneur, such as full dedication and building a good team around you. He also showed his latest engagements on the climate change problem.


• Another remarkable speaker was Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of MIT MediaLab and founder of the ambitious project One Laptop Per Child. Negroponte outlined the importance of children from developing countries having access to a computer: it helps foster intellectual creativity and, consequently, boost their development.


• Professor of psychology at Stanford University and internationally known researcher Philip Zimbardo startled the audience with the theories included in his book, The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life. In this work he categorises people in past, present and future orientations and demonstrates that those people who are focused in the present and the future time are today’s creative minds and tomorrow’s innovators.

Festival highlights
The Picnic Labs were small workshops where each group instigated an idea that was finally pitched in the main conference hall as part of Picnic Bites. This year´s edition seemed

to be a little bit greener and therefore attendees could dive into Picnic Ecomap Lab, Picnic Creative Ecosystem Lab or Think Cradle2Cradle. All these Labs meant to attract participants concerned with ecological awareness and sustainability philosophy.

Meanwhile the event also organised the so-called Picnic Specials, small discussion groups built upon this year’s key topics to generate ideas, arguments and where the audience had the chance to interact with the speakers. Worth mentioning was the aptly-titled Reality Continuum, which pondered the increasing gravity of digital interactions and debated the controversy between virtual reality and real life.

Transmedia producer Nonny de la Peña and digital media artist Peggy Weil showed current work including a virtual access of Guantanamo Prison, leading into the discourse of how journalists report on destinations when we are denied access.

Picnic has always been a place that brings together visionary people with the most groundbreaking ideas and entrepreneurial spirit. But this year it also integrated eco-friendly policies and green solutions.

The Green Challenge is an international competition launched by the Dutch Postcode Lottery for the most innovative product or service idea to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The winner of this contest receives prize money of 500,000 euro to help finance their project. In previous editions Green Challenge was supported by international figures like former US president Bill Clinton and world-famous British entrepreneur Richard Branson.

This year’s winner was Power Collective Limited and its ingenious Wind Turbine. A nearly invisible rooftop wind turbine described by co-funder Dean Gregory as a “very small, very efficient windmill that blends into the open landscape…created for people in town to generate their own electricity, save carbon and save money.” Taking into account a basic estimate of 500,000 units across the world, it would be equivalent to turning off one coal power station.

Dessert
Seasoned with sunshine, music, light displays and good karma, it truly was a picnic of innovation and creative challenges in a non-stop vibrant atmosphere, designed to provoke quirky reactions, entertain, inspire and uncork your brain.