I'm a little surprised there's no reference in the book to the decline in standards of photography within the news media.
I started out in this profession back in the 1970's, with two basic manual SLR cameras, just four lenses and black and white film, yet I turned in the best quality pictures of my career during this period.
Now I am overladen with digital gear plus computers etc., costing 15 times as much as my old manual cameras, yet much of the time I'm commissioned to shoot garbage, by picture desks brought up on "celebrity culture".
The imagination of (mainly) tabloid picture desks these days, seems to be limited to: "Which drug ridden showbiz low life shall we doorstep today?". To actually suggest a bona fide picture feature without celebrity involvement, is to be thought of as being about as outmoded as the steam engine.
I wonder who's interest editors have in mind when serving up this daily "celeb diet?" Certainly not their readers, if the year on year circulation figures are anything to go by. In case editors hadn't noticed, they've been in decline now for some time, while the fortunes of papers like the Financial Times are in the ascendant.
How far do things have to go before editors take notice? Or is the hoary old chestnut of having to go even more "downmarket" to improve circulation, too ingrained ever to be eradicated?

Pictureman