Eagle-Eyed Programmer Led To NYT Photo Retraction

By all accounts, the first person to spot the digital alterations in Edgar Martins' now-withdrawn New York Times Magazine photo essay was a user named unixrat on the MetaFilter community site. Offline, his name is Adam Gurno, and he's a computer programmer in Minnesota. He's the one who created the damning GIF animation we linked to in our post yesterday.

Gurno was identified and interviewed yesterday by blogger Simon Owens at Bloggasm. Gurno explained how he spotted the signs of a mirror effect in one of Martins' photos in the online slide show:

"...I was looking at the shot with just the framing, the half done house, a shot from the inside. And right at the top there was this tiny bit of wood, and it sort of set off a little internal alarm. … The angle on it seemed a bit unreal and it kind of made me say, ‘I don’t know, I think these are kind of fake.’ I kind of got the feeling it was. So I posted about it on Metafilter."

New York Times Magazine Withdraws Altered Photo Essay

UPDATE, 5:57 p.m. ET: The New York Times has published a new editors' note about the altered photo essay that was published in Sunday's Times Magazine. The newspaper says "most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show." The note does not address which photos were altered, or whether the photographer misrepresented them to the editors. PDN has tried to reach Edgar Martins, the photographer, but has not heard from him. Here's the Times' note:

"A picture essay in The Times Magazine on Sunday and an expanded slide show on NYTimes.com entitled 'Ruins of the Second Gilded Age' showed large housing construction projects across the United States that came to a halt, often half-finished, when the housing market collapsed. The introduction said that the photographer, a freelancer based in Bedford, England, 'creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation.'

"A reader, however, discovered on close examination that one of the pictures was digitally altered, apparently for aesthetic reasons. Editors later confronted the photographer and determined that most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show. Had the editors known that the photographs had been digitally manipulated, they would not have published the picture essay, which has been removed from NYTimes.com."

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UPDATE, 5:03 p.m. ET: The New York Times plans to run an editors' note about the altered photographs in tomorrow's paper, according to Kathy Ryan, photo editor at The New York Times Magazine.

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EARLIER POST:

The New York Times Magazine has withdrawn a photo essay by Edgar Martins — described in print as having been produced "without digital manipulation" — because several of the photographs show signs of digital manipulation. The photo essay, which ran in the July 5 issue of the magazine, shows abandoned real estate projects.

An editors' note now appears when you try to view the online version of the essay.

Maine Photographer Rescues Swimmer

A local fire chief credits a newspaper photographer with saving a swimmer's life in Wayne, Maine yesterday.

Kennebec Journal staff photographer Andy Molloy was taking photographs of some people swimming when one of the swimmers got caught in a current and swept over a dam. The swimmer was hurt after a 15-foot fall onto rocks. Molloy jumped in to help, according to a story in the Kennebec Journal:

"Molloy, who has worked as a first responder in the past, and two other unidentified men who had been working nearby were able to pull Lawson to the shore and hold him above water until rescuers arrived.

"'Andy (Molloy) went into the water and dragged him to the edge,' [Wayne Assistant Fire Chief Brian] Roche said. 'He was the man who saved (Lawson) from going under permanently.'"

A photo of the man just before he was swept over the dam appears with the Journal's story.

Gannett to Cut Another 1,400 Newspaper Jobs

Gannett plans to let go another 1,400 employees at its U.S. newspaper division, with most of the layoffs taking place on July 9. The cuts represent about 3 percent of Gannett's total workforce.

The planned job reductions were announced in a memo to employees this week by Bob Dickey, who heads Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing division. "Unfortunately, we must take these steps because the advertising environment remains challenged. There have been some promising signs of a recovery, but the reality is the improvements are not broad-based and the economy continues to be fragile," Dickey wrote.

Read more at Editor & Publisher.

The Best Michael Jackson Front Page

Michael Jackson was a man of music and dance, which don't easily lend themselves to still images. He was photographed constantly, and yet his ever-evolving appearance meant there was no single, definitive image of the man. Indeed, survey the media coverage the day after his death and you'll find no consistent picture. He's a child, he's grown up, he's healthy, he's sick, he's black, he's white.

After browsing today's front pages at the Newseum and a gallery of newspaper front pages compiled by the Guardian, we spotted one image that stood out. It's today's front page of Extra, a newspaper in Rio de Janeiro. The photo, rather than reminding us what Jackson looked like at one moment, just tells us he's gone.

NYT Reporter Escapes Taliban; Wife is Photo Editor

David Rohde, a New York Times reporter who was captured by Taliban forces seven months ago, is safe after escaping from a Taliban stronghold in the mountains near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Rohde's abduction was kept secret by the Times in order to protect his safety as a hostage. Rhode, along with a local reporter and a driver, was abducted outside Kabul on November 10. Rhode had accepted an invitation to interview a Taliban commander in Logar Province. The local reporter, Tahir Ludin, escaped with Rhode by climbing over a wall, according to The Times. The driver, Asadullah Mangal, did not escape.

If the Journalism Business Fails, Who Pays for Photojournalism

Time magazine pop culture columnist James Poniewozik blogged yesterday about what might happen to journalism if the entire business fails.

"What replaces it? And by that, I mean, who pays for what replaces it?" he wrote [his emphasis]. The post outlined several possibilities for who might create, fund and edit reportage in the future. He concluded his post by writing: "I guess all these ideas boil down to one principle: if journalism—reporting, analysis, communicating, whatever you want to call it—takes time, then someone will have to either pay for or donate that time."

There have been myriad discussions recently about what future models for journalism might look like, but not many mention photojournalists directly. It’s interesting to consider where photography fits into these new business models. Is professional photojournalism more or less susceptible to being undermined by "free" photojournalism created by amateurs, hobbyists or people with other means for supporting themselves?

If the journalism business were to fail, would the void left by professional photojournalists be easier or more difficult to fill than the void left by professional writers? Can the photojournalism business find its own means of sustaining itself separate from the models being discussed for the rest of the journalism industry?

Newspaper to Rely on Volunteer Photographers for a Month

A small daily paper in western Colorado, the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, is getting kicked around today on some media blogs. The reason? While the newspaper's lone staff photographer is on vacation, the paper is enlisting amateur volunteers to shoot photos.

As photographer Kelley Cox explains a story published this week:

"I am taking a vacation for the month of June. My husband, Mike, and I will be spending a few weeks in Europe, and since neither of us have ever had a passport before, we are both very excited about this new adventure.

The Glenwood Springs Post Independent is very fortunate to have two local amateur photographers to step up to the tripod and volunteer their time and their talents, Kyle Simonson and Sharon Yoast."

For their sake, here's hoping nothing happens this month in Glenwood Springs that is challenging to photograph.

The Post Independent is part of Swift Communications, which owns about 25 papers in the West.

Court Rules Politician Can't Censor His Own Arrest Photo. Obviously.

Here's a small victory for photographers: A state legislator in New York failed in an attempt to stop a newspaper and a TV station from publishing pictures of him in handcuffs after an arrest. Newsday and News12 ran the pictures against the lawmaker's objections. On Friday, a judge ruled in their favor.

More from Newsday: "A federal judge Friday threw out a lawsuit by Nassau County Legis. Roger Corbin seeking to bar Newsday and News12 from disseminating photos of him in handcuffs taken after his arrest earlier this month."

Corbin's attorneys argued that publishing his photo could jeopardize his right to a fair trial. Case law, and a pesky thing called the First Amendment, are overwhelmingly in favor of the news outlets, and a judge ruled to throw out the case. "The court is simply without authority to censor the press," said U.S District Judge Arthur Spatt.

See one of the Newsday photos by James Carbone here.

Downsizing (Literally) at The New York Times Magazine

Joe Strupp of Editor & Publisher reports on the incredible shrinking NYT Magazine:

The New York Times Magazine, considered the top revenue producer of newspaper Sunday magazines and often ranking among the best ad revenue magazines in the country, is cutting its size by 9%, according to a Times spokeswoman.

The smaller version of the glossy magazine will debut in two weeks with the June 14th issue, according to Magazine Editor Gerald Marzorati.