I have to admit, my musings about “the vast wire service in the cloud” the other day did stem from some sense that the job I’m training for just isn’t sustainable. This article eloquently argues that as soon as digital technology touches a thing, its marginal cost drops to zero. And while I have no doubt that there will always be a role in our society for the tellers of truth and the seers of history, I can’t help but worry that the same trend is going to drive the cost of photography and journalism in the same direction. 

Flickr has a vast pool of users photographing and giving their photos away for nothing more than a photo credit. And if it were only pictures of cats it would be one thing, but thirty seconds of searching shows that they’re giving away everything from stock photography to coverage of the primaries. One argument I’ve heard is that we just need to do better work and tell better stories. But the trend in mass media today is clearly in the direction of covering crap, we know this. Crap makes for better ratings than difficult reporting on issues of social justice. On that note, Anderson Cooper’s show has already jumped on the bandwagon of airing free, viewer-generated crap. And given the choice of free crap that makes money and expensive journalism that doesn’t, well, look around. This trend is well underway. 

The other day I was telling Donna that I wish there were an organization out there, be it a news organization or what have you, that could say, “Just go out there and do good and meaningful work, and we’ll figure out how to make money, we’ll figure out how to find an audience.” Newspapers and magazines used to fulfill that role. LIFE Magazine used to fulfill that role. 

But on the same day that WIRED magazine published an article on how everything’s going to be free (and according to them, free! is! great!), WIRED showcased the work of ten photographers shooting Holgas. The magazine is making money on ad revenue. And how did they pay the photographers?

A new Holga and a T-shirt for the winner. Nothing for the other nine. 

I know the WIRED thing is just a contest, and I know that Anderson Cooper errs on the side of crap on almost a nightly basis, but when I see a lot of people giving away a lot of photographs, and an industry that’s trying some pretty desperate things in the hopes of making money, I get worried. I get worried because I see the same trend that the author of that article saw. I get worried because it doesn’t take an economist to see that this is only the beginning.