Press: Cameras for Reporters

The distinction of bespectacled, imperturbable John Jay (“Jack”) Price is that he is a news photographer who can also write English. Author (News Photography), longtime chief cameraman for the late New York World and now a Manhattan free lance, Jack Price has long campaigned for the improvement of his unpopular trade by supplying all reporters with cameras to take their own pictures. This procedure would effectively abolish Jack Price’s vocation, except for the fact that reporters stubbornly dis dain so practical an accomplishment as photography. Jack Price’s trade, how ever, is now further than ever from extinction, because newspaper publishers have discovered that news pictures help circulation and enormously improve their newspapers’ appearance. Torn two ways by its journalist’s contempt for photography and its publisher’s interest in photography, Editor & Publisher has studiously ignored news photography for many a long year. Last week it turned its head, opened its eyes, began a regular weekly column on news photography called “Eyes of the Press.” Author: Jack Price.

First issue of “Eyes of the Press,” correctly styling itself “a new departure and the first of its kind in the field,” plugged Jack Price’s old campaign to give reporters cameras. “The snobbishness of the scribe towards the photographer,” declared Price, “is fast disappearing. A well-covered story is still the paramount issue. . . . Photography is no longer the specialized profession. . . . Any reporter can make a really good picture within a short time if he will give a little care and attention to a camera. . . . Some of the great est of all news photographs have been made by amateurs. . . .”

Estimated first cost of a darkroom, cameras, chemicals, film, etc., for a small newspaper: $1,000.