The press crisis is also raging in the United States and is wreaking havoc on editorial staff, which has seen the number of their employees cut by two and a quarter of newspapers in the past fifteen years. One of the main victims of the crisis is the image, and those who make it, the photographers. The CatchLight association in San Francisco took a gamble: that of subsidizing photographers in editorial offices to show their value and that of the image at the local level.
The director of CatchLight is a Franco-American, Élodie Mailliet-Storm. She knows photography perfectly after having worked for ten years at Getty, a reference agency. She wants to fight against what she calls the “image deserts”. “When they had to cut their budget, these local media started by cutting off their visual reporters, thinking that after all, anyone can take a picture, or can’t we go look for pictures on Instagram. ?‘, she explains.
“There is a fairly significant impoverishment of visual journalism at the local level, which has not helped local communities to see themselves portrayed in the press in a nuanced way or represented at all.”
Élodie Mailliet-Storm, director of CatchLightto franceinfo
To remedy the problem, CatchLight paid the salaries for several months of three photographers in newsrooms that no longer had a real photo service. At Californian salinas, a daily in rural southern San Francisco, the association found that readers spent 30% more time on an article accompanied by a professional photo. The emotional connection was stronger. As a result, two of the three subsidized photographers were hired at the end of the program.
Yesica Prado works full time for the site San Francisco Public Press now. “Before, all journalists had to find an image for their article themselves, but it was difficult because they are not photographers. There, the only original images on the site are mine., she rejoices. We also used archival photos but stocks are running out and the same photos are found in different articles. “
Encouraged, the CatchLight association released two million dollars to extend the experience with new photographers.
We announced the expansion of our collaborative model of visual journalism with the establishment of the CatchLight Local Visual Desk in California — a $ 2 million, three-year investment to address the decline of visual journalism.
: Yesica Prado / CatchLight Local pic.twitter.com/L2Z4ZhH8zg
– Catchlight (@catchlight_io) November 13, 2021
Élodie Mailliet-Storm points out that beyond the simple example of CatchLight, philanthropy in the media has strengthened in the face of rampant disinformation since the 2016 presidential election. French, funded byEtat, in the American media.
Philanthropy looks like a tempting alternative when the traditional model of an ad-supported newspaper is threatened by Google and Facebook’s grip on the industry. The two giants dominate over 75% of the local online advertising market. And in Washington, Congress is working on a tax credit to encourage the American PQR to recruit more journalists.