One of the oldest and most respected of on-line photography magazines looks likely to halt publication at least temporarily – following a decision by Canon to end its sponsorship.
I’ve often admired ‘The Digital Journalist‘ for its great features on photojournalism, linking to a number of them over the years. Its editor, Dirck Halstead, had become Life magazine’s youngest war photographer during the Guatemalan Civil war when he was only 17. After that he went to college and then worked for UPI for 15 years and was in charge of their picture bureau in Saigon during the Vietnam War. From 1972 he covered the White House for Time for 29 years, making 47 Life covers, as well as working on many films. You can see over a thousand of his pictures in his on-line archive.
With this background, Halstead was able to make his site an authoritative one, getting pictures and features by some of the best photojournalists in the 145 issues produced over 12 years to date. He headed up a strong team on the magazine, including Horst Faas as Europe Editor and Marianne Fulton as Dispatches Editor. Contributing editors include many more fine photojournalists, and then there are around a dozen contributing columnists and photographers – you can read the full and impressive list on the magazine’s credits page.
All this of course needs substantial funding, and this comes through sponsorship and advertising. Canon was the magazine’s principal sponsor and in a letter in the November issue Dirck Halstead writes:
“Unfortunately, our principal sponsor, Canon, whose market has also been impacted by these turbulent times, has decided they can no longer afford to provide their financial backing to The Digital Journalist. We are very grateful for the generous support they have given us over the years. “
Halstead’s letter starts with the grave news “I am afraid that the December issue of The Digital Journalist may be our final issue, at least for a while” and the magazine now has PayPal links asking readers to donate funds for the future of the magazine. It came as a surprise to me that, according to Halstead, the site only has “more than 10,000” loyal readers, though I’m not sure exactly what that number means. I hope they do come up with the money to keep going, as well as to carry out the kind of funding they had been hoping to actually “send photographers out into the world to do their work, documenting the important stories that shape our lives and history.”
>Re:PHOTO of course operates on a very different budget. Like zero, or rather a small negative amount that comes from my pocket to pay for the web hosting. And a great deal of unpaid work by me. It’s a part of what I somewhat laughably call my business (it was only just in profit last year, though earlier years have been better) and it promotes my own photography as well as commenting on issues which I hope are of interest to you guys who are reading this.
Somewhere on >Re:PHOTO it says I welcome contributions of material to be published here that fit within the general idea of the site. I’ve been very pleased to publish a few pieces – mainly exhibition reviews – by John Benton-Harris, whose work I admire. Contributions are welcome from others too, so if theres an issue in photography youre burning to write about do get in touch – but the rate is exactly what I get – zero.
I’m pleased to say that this site too has its loyal readers and from time to time I meet some of them when Im out taking pictures. It certainly it gets a pretty healthy number of page views – around 2,800 per day on average at the moment, and rising. But hardly I think in the same league as The Digital Journalist.
I do hope The Digital Journalist manages to keep going, though I think it likely it will need to very much tighten its belt. A tighter financial climate and the shake-up that is causing may even improve it. Although it does deal with the changes and developments in the industry, it often seems very much stuck in an earlier age, and just occasionally strikes me as being written for retired photographers by retired photographers.