Photojournalism and the Tabloid Press," Suggests That

¶ … Photojournalism and the Tabloid press," suggests that while once tabloid and mainstream media were separated by their subject matter and style, now these styles have become increasingly blurred. So-called mainstream media has adopted the visual storytelling format from the tabloids. Once, the tabloids concerned themselves mainly with telling tales about stars and celebrities in a visual and sensational format, where the visual drew the reader in and the visual image told most of the lurid story.

Now, the mainstream media uses visual images in a similar way, even when it is attempting to chronicle a sober matter of national policy. Becker provides first a historical overview of the use of photography in different forms of journalism. She notes, as the news media business changed, the character of photojournalists and thus the character of photojournalism as a profession underwent a profound shift.

The era of the purely visual and superfluous study of celebrities came to an end, as photojournalists came to be better educated and more intent on being regarded as professionals, rather than merely as technical operators of the camera and sellers of the image. Visual storytelling came to be considered a legitimate subject of study and a profession, rather than merely an aspect of tabloid sensationalism. Visual images were no longer the 'handmaidens' to the text.

First in tabloids, the image was more important to the story than the blaring headlines. However, as pictures came to be of better quality, and to tell more than the 'thousand words' of the cliche, mainstream media came to use educated and credited photojournalists more and more, and to value them almost as much as they did their reporters.

There was another profound cultural shift, along with the predominance of the visual media of the tabloids and the demand amongst the photojournalists that their profession is taken seriously by mainstream editors. The nature of the daily newspaper changed as well, in the face of competition from more visually oriented television. This made the competitive marketplace that the photographs journalists operated in far wider and open to greater remuneration.

As both print and television expanded in its venues, photojournalists had an opportunity to make greater profits, to earn greater respect, and they also had more digital tools at their hands to manipulate their images and to make the images tell a tale. The presence of the paparazzi, or ordinary people who sold pictures for profits to the tabloids changed the marketplace as well.

As the tabloid venues grew, and television shaped the desires of the reading public, mainstream media was invariably affected by becoming more visual, and even legitimate photojournalists resorted to more attention seeking pictures and measures to garner respect. Thus, on one hand, in the popular press, photographs have become increasingly mistrusted, as they are more obviously manipulated and subject to technological whims and cuts.

(Becker, 1992) Yet photography has also increased in prestige and importance in selling newspapers, tabloid and non-tabloid, as the tendency to visualize an article's storyline is more and more important in the mainstream.