Lists for Hits

W. Eugene Smith, Dewey Defeats Truman, 1948

Oh I tried, I really, really tried to keep my mouth shut about this terrible excuse for content on the VANITY FAIR website with their list of the 25 best news photographs.

Here's how they introduce the slide show,

"In honor of Vanity Fair’s 25th anniversary, the magazine’s editors flexed their list-making muscles to determine the 25 best of everything—from book covers and documentaries to parties and political one-liners. Herewith, the top 25 news photographs. Vote for your favorites on VF Daily."

Let me translate,

"Here are 25 more chances for our advertisers to sell you something."

Online advertising is all about two things, views and clicks.

Publishers get a little for views (counted per thousand) and a lot for each time someone actually clicks on an advertisement. When I say a lot, I mean a publisher can make more profit on one advertisement click online then what they make on selling one magazine at the newsstand.

The idea is to have as many views as possible. That's how your ad revenue is measured. Plus with more views you have the potential of getting more clicks.

So that explains all of the top ten, twenty-five or one hundred lists pasted across the interweb.

Now this strategy isn't so much different than the time-honored practice of selling cheap subscriptions. The problem with cheap subscriptions is that you have to print and ship all of those magazines, which costs more than what you've charged for the subscription. The plan being that more readers equals more ad money.

Sometimes the scheme works, sometimes LIFE magazine goes out of business.

The nice thing about the web is that you don't have to pay for paper and ink (you still have an electronic "postage" fee). You've eliminated two of your greatest costs, so ideally this set-up is...ideal.

Now here's the difference and the problem between the two mediums. When faced with the huge costs of printing and distributing a magazine, editorial costs didn't seem so bad. Publishers were, well not happy about it, but didn't mind paying the costs of producing the best content they could to match their business/editorial/demographic needs, because it was just a fraction of their overall costs.

So how do you justify the costs of online content when it is so easy and cheap to deliver?

Oh yeah, here's the other thing. Companies like Google take the lion's share of the online revenue. The publishers have no idea what Google actually charges people for placing ads around their content.

Right now, publishers (and the editors that work for them) are attempting to create online content that moves pages through your browser. That's how the money is counted. It isn't measured by the quality of the content, just the dispose-ability.

Which brings us back to this slideshow that looks like it was edited by the interns over lunch. What's up with reproducing a vintage print like the one above? This isn't a Sotheby's catalog, or did someone just set their latte on it during the meeting?

Most of the images were made over fifty years ago...OK just one example, Challenger Explosion. Pretty good frame. Pretty big event. Actually happened in my lifetime.

Most of the images look like they were chosen by word people.

Which means they are documents from certain big events. That's not how photography works. Sometimes you can discuss something without actually showing what a word person would define as the key moment. So maybe a better choice than a straight-on shot of Martin Luther King giving his "I Have a Dream" speech, you could publish a picture showing what led up to, or the changes brought about by the speech.

Which brings up another problem with this type of content.

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936

The content needs to be cheap and readily available to make the cut. Editors or researchers don't have the time or budget to search too long or pay too much.

You know, this image is in the public domain, because it was made for the FSA. How the heck did Corbis get their grubby paws on it?

Why did you pay them for delivering it to you?

Speaking of which, those Bettmann, Keystone and Getty guys sure had great careers. The three of them certainly produced some of the best photography of the past century. I'm being sarcastic of course.

Except in very rare cases, like a traffic camera capturing a plane crash, all images have authors. They didn't happen without human thought. Not crediting the specific photographer who made the image is the word equivalent of publishing a bunch of famous quotes without attributing the author.

Would that be acceptable?

Everything I've described here is the direct result of creating content with the goal of generating page views (I haven't even mentioned the poor user interface). I'm picking on VANITY FAIR a bit because they can take it, but this rant could have been easily directed at a dozen different big-time magazines.

The only thing that will save this industry is the quality of content, not the number of page views.

At some point advertisers will demand that they are charged by how long someone keeps their eyes on your page, not by how many times their ad flashes by. Until that time I don't see the quality improving.

I can say this because I know that all of the editors who are struggling everyday to produce quality content for their magazines agree with me.

Comments

[seattle photojournalist]

Keep on telling it like it is. Maybe if enough of us get it it will change.

[andy levin]

Ken, the blog is getting better and better. I think you may have a second career.

This reminds me that Black Star had this photographer RW Owen. This dude had a lot of images from everywhere. Guess who he was? Well, Black Star got free pix from all over the place and sold them. NASA, the Libraryof Congress. All over.

They used RW Owen so the bookkeeping department would credit 100% of the sale in the Black Star column on Jeanette Chapnick's ledgers.

[andy levin]

Oh, and I clicked an ad for you.

[hand-it-over]

Okay, had to chime in...

Who cares? I mean really, just keep doing what "you're doing". The same click-thru ads can work for you. Is it important to be published or more important to be seen? I'm not sure which. Sure like Magnum's new approach.

Granted the VF stuff is just a joke, but so is a frick'n Happy Meal. The American way (oft emulated by others) is to make crap and to make a lot of it. Now, this industry can count itself as one of them. Unfortunately, word men and even photographers are an expendable part of the business. Great images will be taken in the future, but they may not be commissioned.