This is the biggest factor/enemy by far and away. I know my local newspaper instead of paying will accept low res and print them smaller instead of paying if their man didn’t get the shots. How you beat or compete with that is beyond me.

Demontix isn’t perfect, in fact they have a ways to go. But they are a tool, just like all the other tools we use, they need adjusted a lot to work best, to be fine tuned.

I’m sticking with them for a while yet and see where the ride takes me.

If anything, Demotix is just giving photojournalists an extra stage to market their work, tell their stories and maybe sell a few pictures every now and again.

As a working photojournalist i’m very happy Demotix exists and wish them the best of luck.

However, i do wish they would reply to emails a bit more promptly

Marc, I was very interested in you example of the beeb using the same generic image of protesters to tell parts of your story of ‘police interaction’! A big part of the decay of paid work for photojournalists is the cheapening of the story, by the publishers, doing so only works in their favour at the expense of their suppliers, the photojournalist. It’s an excellent example.

It was also good to hear a positive note to end the discussion.

Thanks for posting.

1. Jools is 100% right. ‘Citizen Photojournalism’ doesn’t exist.
We reckon that c.90% of our regular contributors (those are the people making money from Demotix) are pros or semi-pros. The rest are amazingly driven amateurs, who are only amateurs because they don’t make a full-time living from their photography. The quality of their work is top notch – as good as anyone’s. The point? Only quality sells.

2. What you call ‘citizen photojournalism’ – those one-off snaps that professionals weren’t there to cover (like the Henry Gates pic, or the plane on the Hudson) – is very simply eye-witnessing. It’s always happened. I’ve listened to our predecessors describing picture sourcing in the 1950s. Train crash at Waterloo, they’d run down, find anyone with a camera, and buy their film roll.
No difference from today, except – of course – the 2.0 web tells the BBC and others they don’t need to pay for the content.
What Demotix does is ensure the photojournalist – whoever they are – gets paid the price they’re owed!
We’re putting payment back into the crowd-sourced model. Why Marc and others get exercised about what we’re up to is beyond me: we’re fighting their fight for them. When we license a picture to the Guardian, we’re licensing it for the same amount they are. We’re on the same side – and if they see us as competition, then they must realise it’s competition based on content not on price.

3. The problem is price point. And because we’re all competing with ‘free’ Creative Commons content on Flickr and elsewhere, we need to be absolutely clear what our competitive advantages are.
If you’re a fantastic photographer, as I said above, with amazing links and relationships, and you can ensure you regularly have pictures everyone wants and nobody has, you’re made.
Otherwise, we all need to think of alternatives.
Demotix is just one of those alternatives. We think – because of our network – we’re more likely to license more imagery. And we’re doing that. Perhaps not as fast as we’d all like, but then we’re 1 yr old, and we’re taking on two enormous oligopolies (the newswires, and the Getty/Corbis monsters). Give us a minute.

And please stop bashing us for killing off paid photojournalism. We’re doing the exact opposite.

These publishers are not exploiting citizen journalists,they are exploiting the fact that every third person has a DSLR or high MP camera.

But this has nothing to do with Demotix or any agency for that matter. The current trend/economy with all publishers is to cut costs, the first thing any business will do to reduce overheads, is squeeze suppliers.

As for only using your image for credits and no fee, if your image is not saleable or has any monetary worth, you can only expect a credit, if it is however, you can sell it, if one publisher wants it for free, sell it someone else. If you’re not a commercial photographer, you just don’t sell it. An unsaleable image works the same if you’re commercial or not. You don’t make any money.

I think the term ‘citizen journalism’ is very confusing and make the whole discussion complicated. A person who witnesses an event is not a citizen journalist, if they choose to tell the story of what they witnessed, they are acting in a journalistic realm. This doesn’t make them a journalist, except while they are telling they’re story.

There is a large group of people who have been inspired by technology making photography much easier and are now looking for ways to commercialise their hobby, if only to afford more expensive kit. This group are more likely to be considered ‘trainee photojournalists’ or ‘apprentice photojournalists’.

The last group would the semi and fully professional photographers.Trying or earning a living from the craft.

All three are citizens and all three are journalists, in the context where they act as journalists.

I would like to give Demotix credit,but for the record ,i have also failed to sell any images through them.I accept your other points.

But I think Turi was referring to the the direct sales to publications, by freelancers, now being limited by the growth of the subscription based business model. This elbows the big agencies in and shuts out the little guy. Editors are then bound by budget to take the agency images, even if they like another, it’s no longer a choice.

I disagree about Demtox being a solution for global importance images only and people not having a clue who to send an image too. If you don’t have a clue how to sell such an image, you won’t have heard of Demotix anyway. Any image with value will easily be sold just by dialling 118118, get a major news publications number and call it. If you can’t work that out, camera’s are also probably beyond comprehension.

The trick is knowing what is saleable.

There are a lot of reasons photojournalists feel threatened currently, if you’re main concern is ‘citizen journalists’, then you need to take better pictures.

The only reason publishers will make use of amateur shots is that a professional wasn’t there to cover it, so this isn’t a loss of earnings concern.

As for credits, it’s not common for revenue generated shots to be credited, unless requested, and this normally means a credit to the agency more often than the shooter.

A photojournalist trying to earn a living will be competing, with other like minded underpaid soles, to get their images in and out first, if not then it’s amateur hour and you won’t be earn a living, most ‘citizen photographers’ won’t even know what they have taken is saleable until a friend tells them to ‘send it to the paper’! Many ‘events’ these days are camera bun-fights, stop and count how many people are sat on a step with the laptop out, they’re filing, they’re selling, everyone else goes to the pub to look at pictures, too late.

Once again it feels strange to defend Demotix but I understand and admire their principles, they are not just selling images. The trend to lambaste them for not being like other press photo agencies is a floored argument, they are not like other agencies. Even worse is the accusations that they are depleting the ability for photojournalists to earn a living.

Are they a good option for a photojournalist to distribute images (the topic), maybe, depends on how you currently distribute. Surely more is better, unless you are assigned to an agency, then it’s not a question.