April 11, 2007

ACROSS THE POND. At a recent appearance for the book, at the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., I was approached by a British photographer. In my talk, I had discussed the difference between the more “muted” imagery that had run on U.S. television screens on September 11 and the more graphic footage that aired across the world, particularly the sequences showing people plummeting from the towers. (The book discusses this dichotomy at length; see pages 127 through 132.)

The photographer made an insightful observation about American vs. foreign news coverage in general. “On the BBC,” he noted, “news is provided country by country: Today, this happened in France, this occurred in Sri Lanka, this in the United States. America is just another country, part of a global community. But in America” -- where this photographer now resides – “America is the world. American television rarely shows what’s going on in England, France, let alone Sri Lanka. The American perspective is isolationist, insular, a land onto itself.” Alas, this is not perspective, but myopia.

THE AUDIENCE GROWS. Speaking of the U.K., we’re close to a deal for publishing a British edition of Watching the World Change this fall. And I’m told that the book, already being taught on three campuses (Amherst, Columbia, and this fall at Trinity), will now be in the curriculum at either Purdue or Indiana University.

RE: THE RE-DEATH OF LIFE (MAGAZINE). This week the Digital Journalist Web site published my short essay, “The Re-Death of Life,” first posted here, in March.

Also, on The Digital Journalist, editor Dirck Halstead discusses the hyperspeed transition occurring as online-newsgathering/YouTube/digital-video, etc., continue to impact visual storytelling: "Dave Metz, the former director of Pro Markets for Canon, recently said that the shift from still to video photojournalism would come five times faster than the shift from film to digital. The best example of how radically this landscape is changing can be seen at The Dallas Morning News." Check out the cover-story take-out on the paper's use of new digital tools for connecting with readers, along with a piece by its director of photography, Leslie White.