Photojournalism Changes Into Visual Reporting

We live in a visually intensive society. Bombarded daily with a steady, unrelenting stream of visual stimulation from all manner of media, we seek understanding from pictures when we are only taught to understand words. We see mediated images more than we read words. Some have warned that if the trend continues, civilization will regress to illiteracy and lawlessness. Other, more optimistic researchers predict that technological advances will merge words and pictures in new ways that will create innovative educational possibilities.
It has been estimated that the average person sees approximately 5,000 mediated messages every day. Computers are cited as the reason for the image explosion. Computers, the software programs that run them, and the publishing networks that present them offer quick and inexpensive remedies for visual artists.
Writers, photographers, and graphic designers have been kept apart by separate production facilities, job descriptions, educational backgrounds, and working class biases. Traditional technology has given editors the excuse to exclude photojournalists from their decisions about story selection, completion, and display. Newspaper photojournalists have unwillingly contributed to their own isolation from newsroom decisions by working in separate spaces-studios and darkrooms-that isolate them from the rest of the newsroom. Although this photographer's club has been comforting as a special place where equally talented personnel can gather, such isolation causes a deepening rift among word and image producers.
Computers are changing everything. The reason is simple-only a photographer can use a photographic enlarger. A computer can be used by everyone for word, picture, and design production. Darkrooms are becoming lightrooms as computers are employed in the newsrooms. Innovative technology is causing a merger between words and images.
As words and pictures become further merged, the role of a writer, photographer, infographics creator, researcher, and graphic designer will become merged into a single title-the visual reporter. This merger of reporters, photographers, and graphic artists in the workplace calls for a new definition and approach. Visual reporting is the marriage of words, images, and designs to convey information.
Journalists must be part of a team. Even before the reporting begins, photographers and graphic designers must be involved in discussions on how a story might be covered. In most cases, they should be involved in the reporting and be encouraged to ask questions. Reporters, on the other hand, must become visually astute. They must be encouraged to collect graphic information at an assignment.
Journalists must not only know how to gather information and write stories and cutlines, but they must also have the confidence to work with pictures and layouts. Consequently, every journalism graduate must know the fundamentals of visual communication-how to sense, select, and perceive a visual message-and how to work a camera, a computer, and the software, how to use database research methods, how to create informational graphics, how to combine words with your stories, and how to make layouts and designs for print and interactive multimedia.
Consequently, there is no required darkroom work. You will shoot all of your photojournalism assignments with color film, digitize your selects with a scanner, and complete your assignments using the computer.
Specifically, you will learn how to use computer software programs to perform traditional darkroom procedures, create print-based picture story layouts, and develop online portfolios and interactive presentations. You will work the entire semester on a single picture story with other students to merge words and pictures in traditional and networked interactive multimedia presentations.