ABSTRACT
In this paper I explore the lot of the press photographer in today’s converged newsrooms, where both formats and roles have merged. Since journalists are now typically required to capture images as well as words, and images are increasingly being sourced from the public, especially for publication online, questions arise concerning both the role of the professional photographer as well as the implications for professional competence and image quality. The focus in this paper is on the online news gallery, a space that has the potential for compelling and innovative visual storytelling through sequences of images. Using semiotic analysis, I explore online news galleries from two English-language news outlets, The Guardian in the United Kingdom and the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia, for visual cohesion between images, and for image quality. The findings suggest wildly disparate practices, often displaying little, if any, concern for rhetorical structure, image quality, or even the number of images in a gallery. If, as Picard states, news organisations are to create value in their products, they need to place more emphasis on their editing and packaging activities to produce coherent and manageable stories and provide knowledge that services users’ needs.
