Hear me, see me: Photojournalist and EPW Cyberteam member J. Carl Ganter gathers audio at Casa Hogar Elim (House of Refuge), an orphanage in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Audio accompanies several stories in the on-line and CD-ROM publications produced at the Electronic Photojournalism Workshop. Photo by Henry Barrios, the Bakersfield Californian, Kodak EOS DC3 digital camera. Reprinted with permission.

Battle cry of digital pioneers: 'Show no fear -- have fun!'

SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- Unlike some ill-fated heroes of the American West who gave their lives more than a century earlier at the nearby Alamo, the 80-plus pioneers who attended the eighth annual Electronic Photojournalism Workshop survived to tell about their struggles.

Some may have left wounded -- most were totally exhausted -- but all could sense they'd spent a week exploring new journalistic territories.

The 1996 edition of the imaging and publishing technology boot camp, sponsored by the National Press Photographers Association (Nppa) and held Sept. 28-Oct. 4, featured a variety of first-ever workshop accomplishments: more assignments shot with digital cameras than with film; multimedia assignments covered for inkless-only publication; stories covered in another country by teams of international participants; stories published in more than one language; placement of the workshop photo and story archive at the center of the workflow rather than at the end; development of an intranet for internal browsing of the photo archive and viewing the World-Wide Web site in production, and a broadsheet newspaper, web site and CD-ROM all produced on-site.

The workshop's mantra was, "Show no fear -- have fun!"

EPW8 Co-Chair John Cranfill, publishing technology manager for the Dallas Morning News, said he and the volunteer staff each year challenge participants to break the rules -- and sometimes the technology -- in an attempt to discover new possibilities and limitations.

"EPW is like a car going around the corner at 90 miles an hour," Cranfill said. "We're not doing our jobs if we don't have at least three wheels off the ground at all times."

The frantic pace of publishing simultaneously in three media this year often gave the impression all four wheels had lost contact, launching the event into a virtual trajectory toward the future.

The workshop began in 1989 as a print-based educational experiment; its mission was to introduce journalists, especially photographers, to the then-new electronic picture handling tools and skills that seemed about to redefine the way visual journalists worked. The results are published in the Electronic Times, known among the workshop family as the "world's greatest annual newspaper."

EPW has become a barometer for tracking the evolution of technological change and its impact on the way we gather and disseminate information, and on the tools available for those efforts.

While stories from the last three EPWs have been published on-line in one or more formats, including Adobe Acrobat PDF pages and HTML files, the original assignments always have been developed for print and then "re-purposed" for on-line delivery. A year ago, several participants ventured further by gathering additional information on their print-based assignments, adding fresh content for the web-based presentation that was not available in the printed newspaper.

Expanding on the concept of developing new ways to tell stories, and the skills and approaches needed to do so, participants had the option to register this year for either the print or inkless track. As potential story ideas were discussed over the summer months, the workshop's management team looked for certain stories that might best be told in multimedia format -- on the web or on CD-ROM -- as opposed to print.

The goal was to develop a mix of assignments, some slated for print-only use, some for non-print-only distribution and others for dual coverage and delivery.

Besides crossing some job description boundaries, EPW8 offered some participants the chance to cross another border -- the one separating Texas and Mexico, several hours south of San Antonio.

The setting offered first-ever possibilities for sending workshop teams to another country to explore non-American lifestyles and cultures. While that led to arguably some of the strongest images and stories of the week, it also was the source of the most controversial editing decisions.

One story about legal prostitution across the border in La Zona district of Nuevo Laredo raised ethical and journalistic questions about which pictures to publish and why (or why not). In addition, it fostered a lengthy discussion at one of the workshop's daily staff and participant meetings about the broader theme of trying to report accurately on sensitive stories involving cultural differences -- and whether that ought to be attempted on stories where visual reporters from outside the local area ventured into unfamiliar territory.

Stein Bjoerge, an internationally experienced photographer from Aftenposten in Oslo, Norway, made over the course of several hours a series of compelling images, including one showing a prostitute and customer sitting on a bed, and another that captured two dogs mimicking the area's renowned sexual behaviors.

Staff editors and participants debated at length the merits of publishing these and other images, and whether they told the story or distracted from it.

Others, including the photographer, argued that the story itself could be told as either a sad tale of young women and girls trapped in a lifestyle they do not for the most part enjoy, or simply as a less unemotional story about a regional lifestyle. Bjoerge felt the editors' decisions took the latter route, while in Norway, he said, his newspaper would have taken the more provocative and involved approach.

In the end, this story was published in the newspaper, on the web and on the limited edition CD-ROM, each with a different edit and presentation. Additionally, the photographer's insightful comments can be heard on the inkless versions.

Another controversy flared in and around the hotel-ballroom-turned-high-tech newsroom over a story about bullfighting. Several of the digital camera images by John Harte, a photographer with the Bakersfield Californian, were particularly gruesome, showing the bloodied bull as it neared death, and then after it was mercilessly killed to the cheers of the crowd.

Harte expressed his dismay at watching the seemingly cruel event, and was not sure whether it should be reported in the same sense as he might cover a typical American athletic event, or as an expose of a shocking -- but traditional -- Mexican sport.

Editors debated whether to publish some of the more graphic images, and whether they were necessary to tell the story. Some felt there seemed to be a tendency to back away from publishing images that were too strong for fear of upsetting some readers.

Perhaps ironically, a few days earlier National Public Radio aired a segment called "Is Photojournalism Dead?" on its Weekend Edition program. Some at the workshop said that fear of publishing strong, accurate images that might provoke some readers was one sign that overly cautious editors might be contributing to the alleged demise.

Even Bast, another of the dozen or so Norwegians at EPW, was the writer assigned to the bullfight article.

"I think it is a horrible event/sport/culture or whatever it is," said Bast, a photo editor for Dagbladet in Oslo. "It is still cruelty against an animal, who suffers over a long period, to the amusement of people. I think one should show all the cruelty in the pictures to the reader and inform them what is going on so the reader can make his own decision.

"I am not sure the reader wants to be protected against this. We show victims in Bosnia, so why should we not show suffering animals?"

The bullfight story was re-edited for use on the web and CD-ROM, with audio and additional images (including some of the photographer on assignment); in addition, the story was translated into Norwegian by one of the participants and published in two languages.

Despite the oft-heated debates about editing, many workshop veterans found the conversations to be not only enlightening, but indicative of an important change. Throughout the almost two-hour discussion, there was no mention of the digital cameras, scanners or software being used on the stories; content was the primary concern.

"This is the first technology gathering that I have been to in the past seven years in which technology was a secondary topic," said workshop staffer Jeff Adams, systems editor and director of photography at the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News. "Most of the conversations I heard focused on photojournalism, not on the technological tools we now use to produce photojournalism.

"For me, the workshop signaled the beginning of the end for the new technology era in newspapers -- the 'new' technology is now commonplace."

A less inflammatory across-the-border story that perhaps was one of the best examples of multimedia storytelling featured the heroic efforts of a woman working at a Mexican orphanage. In addition to compelling photography, a seven-minute audio segment by J. Carl Ganter, a Traverse City, Mich.-based free-lance photojournalist with significant broadcast experience, adds an emotional and informational layer the images alone cannot convey.

The audio segment is available on the web site in downloadable RealAudio format, roughly an 800-kilobyte file.

While story content took center stage more so than ever at EPW8, there were numerous technological highlights worth noting.

With a plentiful supply of digital cameras from Nikon, Kodak and Canon, and an expanding interest at newspapers in the advantages of filmless photography, more assignments were done digitally than with (Kodak Multispeed) film.

The potential nightmare of acquiring and storing such a large quantity of images captured on PCMCIA cards was addressed with a prototype, high-speed card reader and file server, dubbed "Audrey," developed by the Associated Press initially for its own increasing digital camera use. The product is now being marketed by the AP to other news organizations.

"There was a lot less fear of using digital cameras than before," said Cindi Christie, EPW8 co-chair and a veteran of all the workshops. "Instead, there was a real thirst for going filmless and challenging digital cameras with all sorts of lighting conditions."

At past workshops, text and photo archiving had been situated closer to the back end of the production workflow -- stories and images were sent to the appropriate server area after publication, similar to the way most news organizations still operate. With the multiple needs at EPW8 for publishing much of the information in several complementary venues, and the multiple resources being tapped to acquire that content, the archive -- an AP Preserver -- was moved to the heart of the process.

Photographers were required to write captions for all images before they could push them into the system. Using a Netscape Navigator web interface to the archive, staff and participants could browse the working database from any computer in the newsroom, moving selected preview images to a special "lightbox" page and then clicking on the thumbnails to download the images as needed.

A late beta copy of Adobe's Photoshop version 4.0 software was used for all image processing at the workshop, giving attendees a sneak preview of some of the new features of the enhanced product, expected to be released late in the year.

On the web site, a "PhotoBubble" -- a 360-degree photograph resulting from digitally stitching together two 180-degree frames -- provides a look at the makeshift newsroom, with some 60-plus Apple Macintosh and Power Computing machines, and three Apple file servers linked throughout the huge Airport Hilton ballroom.

With an ISDN link to the Internet, provided by the host San Antonio Express-News newspaper's on-line division, participants could do their own on-line research or watch the workshop web site as it was being developed by a small, separate staff.

At the traditional closing banquet on Friday night, attendees received copies of the Electronic Times, fresh off the printing presses of the local host newspaper. In addition, each received a copy of the CD-ROM that was produced on-site. And when they headed to their respective homes, everyone with Internet access could re-visit EPW8 at its on-line home, part of Nppa's web site.

Many lessons are learned at the workshop each year, while new questions are left unanswered until the next year's gathering (tentatively slated in 1997 for Columbus, Ohio).

Among those questions left to further exploration is how best to exploit the differences between the three publishing media -- how different is (or should be) the approach to producing good visual journalism if the stories are to be told in print versus on-line versus CD-ROM?

How might a story be approached differently from the outset if its primary outlet is one versus another, or if it's targeted at multiple delivery methods?

How would you edit content differently for the expected audience of each -- and who is in that audience?

How do you create a unique identity for each, while maintaining threads of commonality?

Opinions varied all week among the staff about the differences, and in some cases, whether there should be any at all.

"Content still rules," said Brian Masck, technology coordinator at the Muskegon (Mich.) Chronicle and CD-ROM production assistant at EPW8.

"You need to have compelling journalism, regardless of the medium," said Masck, president of the multimedia-savvy Michigan Press Photographers organization. "But to be compelling, thinking on the linear level is no longer valid for publishers, editors, reporters and photographers."

Ideally, crossing the borders -- geographically and journalistically -- at EPW8 led to less fear and more fun in many people's outlooks on their careers. It also helped us discover many new paths to follow and questions to contemplate before we assemble to do this again next fall.

-- Kurt Foss

Web site of the eighth annual Electronic Photojournalism Workshop:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/nppa/epw8home.HTML

From THE COLE PAPERS, November 1996, Copyright © 1996, All Rights Reserved.