Friday 21 January 2011

Citizen photos

Former Toronto Sun vet Bill Sandford tells TSF:

"A multi vehicle crash on Highway 11 this morning brought out the citizen journalists. The Star used a so-so (online) photo of the scene, the Globe has citizen video, but the Toronto Sun wins hands down with a photo by MP Tony Clement."

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2011/01/21/16980081.html

4 comments:

  1. Is that still Clement's photo on the Sun's site credited to QMI Agency? Or did QMI rip it down when he gave it to CP as well?

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  2. It seems the photo is no longer there, replaced by video from the Barrie Examiner's J T McVeigh.

    Not sure if his posting to C P was the catalyst.

    Bill Sandford

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  3. That doesn't look like the shot he took from his car, with was from the other side of the pile up. Another interesting fact: his tweets and photos of this incident might have violated Ontario's anti-texting-while-driving legislation.

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  4. Talk about lazy (and sloppy) journalism!

    Why does the Globe site have a video that has absolutely nothing to do with this Highway 11 crash story? Why does it intentionally have a misleading caption for this video?

    Why does the Globe run a 5-minute video with crap sound and useless imagery? Why bother to post unedited video? Are readers supposed to fast-forward through the useless junk and figure it out on their own?

    Why does the Globe headline say "40-car" crash and the story say "20-30" cars?

    Why does the Toronto Sun site run an 8-picture gallery when four of the images are almost the same? What a waste of time! Hello photo editors?? (It's like the abysmally useless Sunshine Girl galleries, but that's another rant).

    Why does QMI take the photo credit line when it was all due to a Barrie freelancer's initiative and his pictures?

    The Toronto Star story did it right: one proper picture (by Sandford) to summarize the story, proper text attributions and proper photo credit.

    Spot news is when most news web sites fail virtually every time. It's all about throwing anything up onto the web site as fast as possible and then maybe fixing it in time for tomorrow's paper. Speed first, accuracy a distant second. How can a news organization not be embarrassed by this mess?

    Hey, it's only the web, no one cares right?

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