I have always had a fairly wide set of interests when it comes to journalism. Though I went to school to study photojournalism, I have also been drawn to video work, multimedia, design and coding. More often than not this left me feeling slightly overwhelmed with all there was to learn, and more of a mediocre jack of all trades than really skilled in any one subject.
Yesterday, I decided to take a step forward in one of those areas, html/css, and build my first web site. While it is true that I have maintained this blog since 2005, I have always relied on templates built by designers far more talented than I who were generous enough to contribute to the wordpress community. Aside from the javascript, all of the code on my new main page at www.danielsato.com was written by me, with inspiration of course from the WPESP Portfolio theme and the Androida theme. I will still have to build pages for my portfolio, contact form, and hopefully at some point, a wordpress theme in order to have the same look and feel throughout.
Mark Luckie, at 10,000 Words, has a great post on where to find tutorials that will help you to add to your skill set. He writes In order to be or remain employed in this industry its essential to hunker down and learn some new skills. The following tutorial sites will take you from journalist to multimedia journalist.
During my journalism education, I found that some of my most helpful and interesting classes were taken outside of the journalism building. For that reason, I have included some links to opencourseware classes related to photography and media. They may not teach you a new skill (some may, as with the Flash classes), but might help you to become a better, more informed journalist. There are, of course, some pros and cons to taking an open courseware class. Often you will not have access to a lecture (though some provide video) and you do not always have access to full course materials.
A handful of San Jose State journalism students are currently in the midst of a ten-day road trip taking them through the United States South and ultimately culminating at the inauguration of our 44th president, Barack Obama. The trip was the brainchild of Dr. Michael Cheers and Professor Bob Rucker, photojournalism and broadcast journalism teachers respectively.
According to the trip blog, “The goal for these journalism, advertising and public relations students — to walk back through time and learn at these historic sites how the blood, sweat and tears of the 1950s and 60s equal rights pioneers paved the way for all people of color, women, gays and lesbians, the disabled and religious cultural groups in America to be recognized, appreciated, and valued in our society, and to have equal opportunity to live the American dream.”
Last summer when I was interning in St. Cloud I was introduced to the concept of mainstreaming, which, as explained to me in a nutshell, was putting minorities in photos when possible, or better reflecting the diversity of the community. Some of the photographers took exception to this policy, not because they don’t want to photograph minorities, but because they search for moments, rather than waiting on a particular person for a moment that may never come just because of the color of their skin. I can understand this, I don’t really think I look at what a person’s ethnic background is when I am taking pictures, just what they are doing, what the composition looks like around them, etc.
Recently at the Register, it appears someone has felt that we have had the opposite problem. Apparently there have been too many minorities featured in some of our prom galleries. Too many? I would argue that minorities are not featured as much as they should be in our paper. I can only think of a couple Black History Month stories in February (I’ll have to check and see just how many there were, I imagine there were more). As such, I don’t think that a few minorities in a photo gallery is really going to hurt anyone.
The galleries in question I believe are the Scavo Prom and the Hoover Prom. In the Scavo gallery, there are 23 images. Ten of those images have a minority in them. However, four of them feature either the king and/or the queen, who were both minorities. Not photographing them and including them in galleries would be like not including multiples of David Beckham because this is America damn it, and he is English! Hoover, as far as I can tell from all of those school information sites, is 60% white. In the 17 image gallery, there are ten images with a minority in them, and four of the ten feature both white and non-white. I should also mention that the slogan on Hoover’s web site is “Many Nations One School.” Ironic? Hoover is also featured in a window advertisement for the Register in the skywalk about coverage of diversity (I am pretty sure it’s Hoover, but it could be North… I don’t go in the office much).
Did the photographer go too far in misrepresenting the demographics of the school? How often do galleries actually represent the demographics of their subjects, be it school or city to a T anyways? Do I have to worry more about who I am photographing and not what I am photographing?
