A good blog entry on the “A Photo Editor” blog today:
In my own brief magazine career I would often get important stories handed to me with an edict to make the images “happy” so the advertisers don’t get upset. I have a little “lesson” of my own for publishers that I’d like to impart. No matter how much ass kissing you do, your advertisers are still leaving. In fact they may be leaving more quickly now because your readers no longer consider you a “must read” after you’ve taken the edge off everything (due to all that ass kissing, natch).
I have been attempting to make the same argument for years – but nobody seems to be listening. Who are we to tell management what to do anyway – we’re just photographers – right?
This is how things go when everything is reduced to pure short-term economic profit-thinking. You loose the whole picture. You forget why people began to read newspapers and magazines in the first place. Remove that reason from the equation, and people will forget why it was that they were reading newspapers and magazines. And stop it.
Entire entry here (this blog is well worth bookmarking BTW):
