Out of the frame: A longitudinal perspective on digitization and professional photojournalism

Contrary to the scholarly literature frequently associating digitization with external threats to professional photojournalists, this study focuses on internal factors: the new routines and practices of digital photojournalism, embedding them in the broader context of growing threats to cultural industries and labor markets. Using a longitudinal perspective, and based on in-depth interviews with 15 Israeli photojournalists with experience of both the chemical and digital eras, we suggest that digitization has had much wider ripples than just accelerating the speed and efficiency in which news photos are taken, transmitted, selected, manipulated, stored, and retrieved. Although not “causing” the crisis in the employment and work conditions of professional photojournalists, the implementation of digitization created a negative synergy between their old and new weaknesses. Further new routines may help restore the supremacy of professional photographers if they succeed in emphasizing their reskilling and upskilling enabled by new technology.