Editors' delight: Newscom's web site is displayed on the left, while Merlin-Net's is below. smartPic's web site is still under development. All three provide photo editors with more photo choices.

New web-based photo sites help photographers, photo editors

While not a specific job title at most smaller newspapers, the role of photo editor is alive throughout the industry: mulling over the day's news pictures to determine the best ones available, cropping those pictures and getting the caption information to the right people to write the caption (which at a small paper is a job usually done by the same person who picks the picture).

And while that role has not changed much over the years, recent business developments will affect the photo editor's job immensely in the near future.

Just a little more than a decade ago, newspapers received photos via a constant stream provided by wire services. The telephoto transmission method was slow and limited the number of photos an editor had access to in a day. The process could take up to three minutes to send an eight-by-10 black-and-white picture, and up to nine minutes to send a color photo of the same size. Moreover, the pictures available were limited to the pictures that were sent.

In an attempt to retrieve one specific photo, the only choice was to take telephoto machines off the network and do an "LD" (long distance) to get the one picture needed. Because this method was not consistently reliable, an editor could be off the network for six to 10 minutes at a time, losing two or three pictures. With this type of aggravation, it was often better to simply accept the pictures that were sent.

Later, when technology switched to digital photo transmission, things weren't much different. Although it was faster to get the photos that were sent, and the "LDs" were easier, it was still basically a "push" method -- wire services picked and pushed the photos to the editor. Again, when in search of a specific photo, a great deal of effort was required to accomplish the mission.

With the recent introduction of picSmart and Merlin-Net and the reconfiguration of PressLink and NewsCom, photo editors now can use a standard web browser to access literally thousands of current photos as well as millions of archive photos -- creating an exceptionally different way in which they are able to work.

Legal algorithms
Washington, D.C.-based picSmart Inc. presents itself as a new non-biased entity in the marketplace, facilitating transactions between photographers and publishers. Craig Herndon, who has 28 years of photojournalism experience with the Washington Post and is a co-founder of the company and its chief executive, said that he'd spent many long hours in front of his computer "trying to figure out the Internet and the Web," terms that he admits are still difficult for him to differentiate. He said that he realized that the notion of a "photo agency" could perhaps cover a myriad of sins.

Any photojournalist who wanted to sell images could gain access to the Web because it is a public conveyance and any buyer who wanted news pictures could plug into the Internet as well and get them.

Also involved with the creation of picSmart is Chief Technologist David Room, a former senior system engineer with an e-commerce company on the West Coast; Eric Yeager, an attorney and legal editor for the Patent, Trademark & Copyright Journal and United States Patents Quarterly, who now spends most of his time operating as an observer in the industry and is corporate counsel, and lastly, Chief Strategic Officer Rick Naylor, a former banking analyst with the Federal Reserve.

Incorporated this last March to serve the interests of institutions as well as photojournalists, picSmart is equal parts technology and law. "There are organizations that represent the rights of photojournalists as well as organizations that represent the interest of publications," said Herndon. "Our concern is about the efficacy of the transaction of the letting of the license to publish."

Still in beta testing, the web site is designed to maximize the earnings on an image on the front-end and reduce the price per publisher on the back-end.

Herndon said that picSmart just wants the transaction to take place in such a way that the rights-holder receives whatever royalties they request and allowing the free-lance photographers to set the terms of the license up front.

He said that there is a good deal of concern on the part of the people who do own copyrights that they be able to collect royalties and license fees for the use of their images. With most publications requesting that free-lance photographers sign away some or all of their rights to images, there is great confusion about copyright law -- which is an area picSmart tries to clarify.

The initial marketplace for picSmart, said Herndon, is among larger newspapers, as the picSmart team wanted a fast turnaround and also wanted to make the company's presence known.

"One of the problems with photography and its peculiarity in the media," said Herndon, "is that you essentially have an unlimited supply of images, so traditional capitalist theory tells us that if you have an unlimited supply, then the price tends toward zero."

This means that when a photographer invests himself considerably in an image, he may not see returns based on his input. Because of this, picSmart has developed licensing and pricing algorithms, one of which asks the editor, "What is this image worth to you?"

This establishes a wholesale value, which picSmart calls "community buying," and allows the tracking of activity of an image in the sale of an image. "If there is a lot of traffic, the price will tend to go up," Herndon said.

When the image reaches its highest value, picSmart can limit the number of sales and provide some measure of exclusivity. But when the traffic falls off, the price goes down, and is available to smaller as well as commercial publications.

Free-lance news photographers may register at the site and post personal biographies along with samples of their work or the photos they wish to sell, along with the rates of various usage rights.

Photo editors are then able to register as well to browse the bios and photos, or conduct specific searches for required images.

In the future, the service will also be targeted at smaller publications that cannot afford subscriptions to services such as The Associated Press (AP) or Reuters, or want original photos from news events that their competitors are covering as well.

Two pioneers combine
PressLink is the granddaddy of on-line digital photo distribution systems. Founded in 1986 as a bulletin board system to distribute graphics to Knight Ridder newspapers, its mission soon broadened. The Knight Ridder graphics operation was merged with the graphics group at Tribune Co. of Chicago and PressLink began distributing the products of the Knight Ridder Tribune Graphics Service. This was shortly followed by the establishment of the KRT, a photo service for Knight Ridder and Tribune newspapers that eventually began selling to the general news world.

The company abandoned its proprietary software in 1995 and moved distribution over to the Web (see The Cole Papers, December 1995).

Representing more than 100 graphics and photo providers, PressLink was merged in with another Knight Ridder subsidiary, Vu/Text to create a company called MediaStream in 1996.

NewsCom, which was founded in 1991 by Peter Eisner and Rosemary Metal, was initially established as a service to allow traveling reporters a "drop box" methodology of delivering news stories to their papers. It evolved into a bulletin board system which by the mid-1990s was also handling photographs. It too moved off proprietary software in 1995 and onto the Web. NewsCom distributed features from the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and in 1999 Times Mirror Co. purchased the company. Last year, Times Mirror itself was purchased by Tribune Co.

Somebody at Tribune and somebody at Knight Ridder then noticed they had two companies doing the same thing and today NewsCom and PressLink are in the process of merging their systems, their data and soon their customers. The new company offers a variety of photos from approximately 50 sources in a one-stop-shopping area that will save editors valuable time. For the time being, the merged companies will maintain the name PressLink-NewsCom and will be available on-line at the NewsCom web site (http://www.newscom.com/).

Maryann Grau, president of Los Angeles-based NewsCom, which will soon house the combined companies' headquarters, said that the company markets the photos of a variety of sources from newswire services such as Reuters, United Press International (UPI), NewsMakers and Exclusive First Editions to photo agencies such as Zuma, Sports Chrome and New Yorker's Cartoon Bank, to mention but a few.

"An editor can enter a name into our search box and cross-search the 50-plus sources that we carry and choose from among hundreds of photos instantly displayed," Grau said.

Newscom requires nothing more than access to a standard web browser. Originally, the service was established to provide foreign correspondents with a way to file stories directly into the editorial systems of their home newspapers. "Service was expanded to allow syndication companies to send material 'outbound' to newspapers and magazines worldwide and with the advent of the Web, enabled us to then market photos from many of those same sources," Grau said.

Photo editors, particularly those working on deadlines, receive the greatest benefit from NewsCom. However, photo providers also profit by gaining exposure into different markets, both domestically and internationally, that they may not currently reach. Grau said that NewsCom has developed a "blind" photo-sharing site for a variety of different uses. "We host the photos of several agencies and newspapers, which are not open to our normal end-users," said Grau.

These are private sites for large account users or, in the case of Tribune Co., for internal photo sharing among its 11 newspapers. The photos come from a variety of sources such as wire services, photo agencies and publishing companies.

A newsphoto cooperative
Another name in the field with a familiar ring and a storied history is Merlin-Net, a news photo-sharing service. According to Peter Southwick, the former director of photography for the Boston Globe and Merlin-Net's photo director, "The advent of digital photography and file transfer has allowed a much greater variety of photo sharing services than those few in existence recently."

Southwick points out that in addition to the Associated Press in the United States and the Canadian Press above the border, other wire services are competitive in the North American market as well. Reuters and Agence France-Presse have made considerable progress in acceptance among daily newspapers. Most photo agencies such as BlackStar and Gamma-Liaison have developed strong Internet capabilities for display and delivery.

Merlin-Net is a division of MerlinOne Inc. of Quincy, Mass., which was founded in 1989 by David Tenenbaum and Jann Van Horne and was formerly known as T/One. One of the leading developers of visual asset management systems, MerlinOne's products are used by about 60 percent of North America's major metro daily newspapers. The company's Merlin text and photo archive has been sold since the early 1990s.

Merlin-Net was the brainchild of Tenenbaum, a former AP photographer who became involved in photo technology in the mid-1980s. Tenenbaum realized that Merlin systems held approximately 7 million images, so he launched development of a cooperative network of Merlins, linking the content from participating newspapers and making it available to customers over the Internet.

Southwick joined Merlin-Net as photo director prior to the launch of the site, and has been a driving force in its development and progress over the last year.

Teresa Martin, vice president for strategic marketing at Merlin-Net, said that the company, launched in December 1999, is two things. "First, it is a service that helps newspapers resell their images both as prints to consumers and as professional resales to other editorial and commercial groups."

Newspapers have their own portal page that they promote to their local readership and their images are part of the larger network, reaching customers beyond the local market, said Martin. Newspapers post their photos to Merlin-Net, which then handles all the details of transactions and fulfillment based on each newspaper's guidelines.

"Second," she said, "it is a technology tool. Some newspapers want to fully brand their resales. With the Merlin-Net-hosted solution, they can control their own resales site, and Merlin-Net invisibly, in the background, handles transaction processing and fulfillment."

Much like the services provided by its competitors, everyone benefits from Merlin-Net. "Photo editors have a way to solve the problem of reprint requests in a way that both satisfies reader needs and doesn't require staff time to manage," said Martin. She said that readers then benefit because they can get reprints of the images they want.

Newspapers benefit because, Martin said, Merlin-Net "opens up new markets for professional resales and consumer print purchases beyond the local market, and also because they can offer a valuable reader service without requiring staff time."

Additionally, Martin said that it is also beneficial to newspapers because they can then legally resell certain professional sports pictures through Merlin-Net's contracts with the National Football League (NFL), for example. The NFL -- as well as the rest of organized sports -- believes it owns all rights to non-news images made at its games. Hence, while a newspaper can publish a picture it makes at a professional football game, it cannot sell that picture to individual consumers without the NFL's permission. Which, of course, would be too difficult to obtain without the type of agreement that Merlin-Net has put into place.

According to Martin, newspaper partners can participate in the Merlin-Net network in two ways: If a newspaper has a Merlin system, a librarian or technician needs only to mark photos in their system to make them available for sale via the network. The paper's Merlin automatically sends a thumbnail version of the photo to Merlin-Net for display. The rest of the purchasing process is completely automated and requires no further effort by the newspaper partner. Print fulfillment and shipping are handled by Merlin-Net. If the newspaper does not have a Merlin system, a librarian or photo editor can send images to Merlin-Net via the drag-and-drop file transfer protocol method -- the photos are then put up on the site by a Merlin-Net editor. Again, the rest of the process is automated.

-- Aimee Beck, beck@colepapers.net

MerlinOne,
(617) 328-6645;
Newscom,
(213) 237-4577,
e-mail: sales@newscom.com;
picSmart,
(202) 265-1140.

From THE COLE PAPERS, January 2001, Copyright © 2001, All Rights Reserved.