The question for any photojournalist is not “Is photojournalism dying?”, but instead “How is photojournalism changing and how can I adapt what I do?”.

David Jolly, NY Times, Lament for a Dying Field: Photojournalism:

Photojournalism, often said to have begun with the American Civil War photographer Mathew Brady, experienced a golden age lasting from before World War II through the 1970s. Magazines like Time, Life and Paris Match — and virtually all of the world’s major newspapers — had the budgets to put legions of shooters on the ground in competition for the best pictures.

Those days are gone; but today’s struggles aren’t a new trend:

“This is not a new trend; it’s the continuation of an old one,” said John G. Morris, a former photo editor whose résumé includes years at The New York Times (which publishes the International Herald Tribune), Life magazine and The Washington Post. “I’m 92 years old, and I’ve survived a lot of crises in photojournalism,” he said. “I find the present situation depressing, but I’m crazy enough to be hopeful. There have never been more images out there, and we need more help in sorting out all the information.”

Agreed; there are significant opportunities in creating better ways to search for and find meaningful, relevant images.

Continuing,

… the business of marketing and selling digitized pictures is led by two global companies: Getty Images, founded in 1995, and Corbis, founded in 1989 by the Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. The stock photo companies rose to prominence by buying up hundreds of image archives and making them available for sale online. While they do continue to sponsor photojournalism — Getty Images employs 130 photographers around the world — the companies are, in effect, services for managing digital property rights.

Oddly, Getty and Corbis face a different problem today; Getty and Corbis need to realize that efficiently matching buyers and sellers is a more valuable core competence than managing a “great” library.

But back to the topic: does this mean photojournalism is dying?

Ten years ago, Dirck Halstead, who spent 29 years as a White House photographer for Time magazine, wrote in Digital Journalist: “When I speak of photojournalism as being dead, I am talking only about the concept of capturing a single image on a nitrate film plane, for publication in mass media.” Visual storytelling has itself been around since the Stone Age, he noted, and “will only be enhanced” by the changes now taking place.

Revisiting that column last month, Mr. Halstead wrote that, if anything, conditions today were worse than he had predicted. To be a photojournalist today, he wrote, “You have to be crazy.”

And someone will write the exact same thing in another ten years.

Why should we expect photojournalism to exist in its past or current form forever? Greater access to the tools of creation and distribution, the expansion and segmentation of demand, reduced transaction costs, more efficient and effective markets, buyers and sellers forced to explore new products, services, prices and business strategies: the forces of Darwinian competition at its best. To repeat:

“This is not a new trend; it’s the continuation of an old one.”

The question for any photojournalist is not “Is photojournalism dying?”, but instead “How is photojournalism changing and how can I adapt what I do?”.

I know which one I would spend my time considering.

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Highly related: Challenge the definition of photojournalism to discover the opportunities.