I learned this morning a photo I’d shot last year was recognized by the Canadian Community Newspapers Association as the top feature photo of 2023.
Normally I don’t pay much heed to such things.
At the behest of my editor, I dutifully compile some possible entries, submit the required information and then forget about them.
But this one hit a bit differently.
Not only did this photo involve one of my favourite people, Chris Wilson, whom I’ve covered at different stages of his career since I first arrived at the Tri-City News in 1991 when he was an Olympic wrestler, then as a Coquitlam city councillor and now an advocate for youth sports, but it’s also a bit of a swan song for our existence as a print newspaper.
How the various community newspaper associations manage their annual awards programs as more and more newspapers move exclusively online is still a bit of an unknown.
But as so many papers have closed, and staffs diminished, so has the level of competitiveness to win awards.
Especially when it comes to photos.
There’s now so few full-time photographers still employed at newspapers, the cream quickly rises to the top. And while there’s still some decent photos captured by reporters doing double duty, the quality of entries across the board is not like it was when there were so many more photojournalists plying their trade at chains like Metroland in Ontario, Black Press and Postmedia in the Lower Mainland as well as pockets of larger community papers in Alberta and Quebec.
The shift of papers to digital has also widened the gulf.
As much as the digital realm can bring advantages like immediacy and opportunities for engagement, most news websites don’t do photos well.
Templated designs tend to demand uniform sizes and formats for photos; RIP the vertical photo.
There’s also so many stories crowded onto home pages, photos run small; a thumbnail just doesn’t have the same impact as a five column image across the top of a story. And linear photo galleries completely dismiss the role editing and design play in visual storytelling.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
In the early 2000s, I can remember many conversations over beers with my colleagues during which we mused the internet would be our time to shine. We were already doing most of our editing and production work on the computer and our photos looked great on a Mac monitor. Plus who doesn’t like looking at good photos and with the unlimited capacity of the web, we could share so much more of our takes with readers.
Design programs like Macromedia Flash also made it possible to add music, commentary and other visual elements to a photo presentation to create true multimedia storytelling.
But such efforts are labour-intensive, something our declining industry says it can no longer afford.
The Toronto Star’s visually-rich tablet-based Touch initiative died less than a year after it was launched, a victim of its high cost to produce.
Even giants like the New York Times and the Washington Post have reduced the volume and sophistication of their online visual storytelling in the time I’ve been a subscriber.
And with fewer photojournalists flying the flag for quality photos, editors are only too happy to run poor-quality submitted photos or — worse — generic stock photos, just so long as stories get posted online as quickly as possible.
It’s a death spiral that further diminishes our connection to our communities and lowers the standard of the product we provide. And flies in the face of what awards are supposed to represent.
MARIO BARTEL 