Old Yorker University: Basic Photojournalism

The Old Yorker has been called many things in our long history from “well-nigh perfect” to “the essential toolkit for intellectual literacy” to “Ritalin for restless minds.” As a result of our stature in our field, new subscribers often wonder why we have not “extended our brand” and created, for example, an Old Yorker board game or a line of amusing cocktail napkins. The reason is very simple. We share Iago’s view:

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

Inevitably, the pursuit of any “brand extension” activities would come at the expense of the great work we do here at The Old Yorker. Our sole purpose was, is, and always will be creating meaningful content that changes lives for the better — not coming up with clever cocktail napkins.

Thus, we are enormously thrilled to be able to announce the inaugural semester of Old Yorker University, our new distance learning enterprise which will use our articles as a teaching mechanism. Starting today, our subscribers can simply continue to enjoy our content in a casual fashion or, if they prefer, they can become students of it by engaging in a more rigorous close reading. Our intention is to confer Bachelor of Arts degrees in our various departments including “New and Improved Quotations,” “The Mirth of the Mead-Hall,” and “Dirty Limericks about George Bush.” Although O.Y.U. is not currently accredited, we anticipate being properly certified by the various licensing bodies in time for graduation in the spring.

Just as our content will become our courses, our courses will become content. To that end, we proudly present the first of our lectures on Basic Photojournalism to both our students and our readers.

No doubt you’ve heard the expression “a picture is worth a thousand words.” A good news photo can enhance a story by illustrating the countless nuances which surround events of the day. However, some stories are more easily illustrated than others. News of a plane crash should be accompanied by a picture of the crashed plane; a story about Barack Obama’s campaign should show Obama campaigning.

But news of a more abstract nature, such as the financial crisis currently gripping the nation, presents a challenge. How do you put a human face on a number or a mood?

The answer most frequently given by our news media is to show a small fry participant in the markets for capital: a broker, say, or a trader, sitting or standing on the floor of the Stock Exchange in a posture of evident distress, usually with his head in his hands.

Here are some examples:

And yet it is reasonable to ask what a picture of someone with his head in his hands teaches us about the state of the economy. Do traders only put their heads in their hands when the market goes down? What if they are having a frustrating conversation with an employee of a rental car company who works in an overseas call center in Bangalore about the fuel surcharge on a recent bill? That kind of thing can drive the strongest of us to put our heads in our hands even on days when the market goes up by 300 points.

Furthermore, on days when the Dow Jones does indeed go up, that news is rarely accompanied by shots of Wall Streeters doing the opposite of putting their heads in their hands by leaping in the air and chest bumping one another or jubilantly calling their dealers to double their normal nightly order of cocaine.

Clearly, the vernacular for illustrating economic news has lapsed into cliche. And with so much economic news, the need for a new common language to describe the Markets’ vicissitudes is abundantly clear.

This, then, is your first homework assignment. Choose a photograph, either one you take yourself or one you find elsewhere, that communicates the current economic state of the nation without showing a person with their head in their hands.

As a guide, here is a photograph we have been using in some of our scholarly writing about the financial crisis. It shows a once-grand mansion fallen into picturesque but forlorn desuetude. The mansion in the picture asks, “what will become of me? Will a new owner restore me to my former glory or will I be swept away and replaced with something more magnificent still or a mere palimpsest?”

Good luck!