Relearning photojournalism

Allan, Stuart ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7767-0470 and Gormley, Anna 2026. Relearning photojournalism. Fowler-Watt, Karen, ed. The Routledge Companion to Journalism Education, Routledge, pp. 294-305. (10.4324/9781032641034-30)

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Paradoxically, at the very moment when journalism has arguably never been more visually-oriented in its purview, the resources necessary to support the commitments of related practitioners – photojournalists, news photographers, videographers, multimedia content creators, documentarists, data visualisers, graphic illustrators, and the like – have never been stretched more thinly, where they have not been rationalised away altogether under budgetary pressures. Rigorous diagnoses of this paradox, let alone efforts to facilitate critical deliberations regarding pragmatic solutions, continue to elude the sustained attention they warrant within journalism education. In striving to encourage wider dialogue and debate regarding possible ways forward, this chapter begins by identifying several formative issues giving early shape and direction to photojournalism courses as they emerged in the 20th century. It resonates with our purposes here, namely because she explains why it proved necessary, in her view, to unlearn much of what she had been taught in order to convey the complexities of certain social issues with sufficient reportorial integrity. Next, the chapter provides a case study drawn from Anna Gormley’s research, where she similarly shows how and why photojournalism’s commitments can be embodied differently to generate more empathetic types of photo-reportage. Refugees equipped with cameras to relay their first-hand experiences often feel empowered, their imagery posing a direct challenge to stereotypical misrepresentations devaluing their humanity. Finally, the chapter makes a positive argument for revitalising the teaching of visual journalism on the basis of the preceding discussion. Pedagogical boundaries must be expanded to be more inclusive of alternative news values and priorities, particularly from the perspective of those otherwise marginalised or unobserved, and thereby alert to nascent forms, practices and epistemologies of visual reportage emerging across news and social media platforms.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Journalism, Media and Culture
Publisher:	Routledge
ISBN:	9781032640938
Last Modified:	20 Jul 2026 16:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/188354

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item