Pardon me if I don’t jump for joy

We all knew it was coming eventually. With the dawn of the iPhone bringing virtually everything to ones fingertips and CNN quoting personal accounts of the public from Twitter during natural disasters and the like, all the ink stained folks in news rooms worldwide knew the inevitable was bound to happen: Citizen journalism on steroids. Regular people out in the streets, reporting news from their laptops/smartphones/whathaveyou, and the media conglomerates eating it up for the sake of free content, faster news and cost cutting. The horror.

Okay, so maybe the New York Times isn’t about to lay off their whole staff of writers in exchange for citizens posting breaking news bits 140 characters at a time. However, an often overlooked branch of journalism is at risk. A new “photojournalism” iPhone app is on the horizon.

Tackable is in the process of releasing an app that serves as part image gathering, part social networking tool in which the public can share photos of what’s going on (aka “breaking news”) from any location with participating news orgs. The greater vision isn’t bad. Assuming enough people participate, the ultimate idea is that if something happens anywhere in the world you can click on a map and see photos of what’s going on in any particular place. Suddenly a paper wanting to post the story no longer has to wait for their photog to get to the scene while happenings unfold.

Tackable is currently working with 34 Bay Area papers on this project, set to launch in “early 2o11” according to their site. Editors can post assignments and anyone using the app can submit a photo. To encourage participation they are offering incentives (ie: a free donut – thanks for the heart attack btw) to anyone whose photo gets picked up. Poynter has a thorough breakdown of the process. It basically works like this: editors can post assignments that show up on a map, the public can pick them up and submit photos, and the editors can then in turn update their story in images as events unfolds. Users of the app can also submit images unsolicited by participating news outlets. Should, you know, you’re out and about and the shit hits the fan. Or, more likely, people decide that whatever they are doing is of the utmost importance and post images upon images of their dogs/babies/apartment walls.

Particularly after the unrest in the Middle East, this sounds enticing. Imagine if this app launched before the protests in Cairo. Visual updates would be posted by the second, no longer by the hour or minute. I can envision the  Tackable feed running on CNN. The potential is staggering. In the middle of all this buzz,  I can’t help but ask: what does this mean for the photojournalist? Will there be some kind of protocol as far as captions are concerned? I also imagine some kind of  copyright-for-editorial-use hidden with a T&C situation that no one will read.

It’s no secret that newspapers are not exactly the cash cows they were before Craigslist, and the intertoobs in general, took a giant chunk out of their revenue. Budgets are tight, buyouts are ubiquitous, and jobs as a “photojournalist” are far and few between. Looking at the bottom line, free images faster are better than hiring a professional to do the job right.

Coming from someone with a degree in photojournalism, the thought of the public replacing jobs with an iPhone camera makes me cringe a little. Okay, it makes me cringe a lot. As of  late, the artistic integrity of a paper has already taken a backseat to the greater issues affecting newspapers today. While every photo submission won’t make for a compelling image, 1 in 100 might. Assuming this app takes off, what does this mean for the professional photojournalist? Will the word itself even morph into a new definition of any kid with an iPhone? Are career photojournalists suddenly a dying breed?  One can only hope that a heavy sprinkling of outfits will do their best to sell stories to eyeballs with a better photograph than the next guy.

While the thought of all those photogs out of work is unsettling, I have to admit that expanding the “fourth estate” to anyone with an iPhone is slightly awesome. Political figures will literally have to watch their backs and TMZ will go nuts collecting images of celebrities misbehaving in public. Lindsay Lohan, this means you.

For photojournalists out there, don’t go quitting your jobs. The thought of leaving all news images to the public is a little scary for everyone on the proverbial news corp ladder. Hopefully the whole thing will work to supplement our hardworking photogs and leave them open to working on more meaningful material instead of chasing ambulances and firetrucks. Or maybe the photogs out there should at least update their resumes/portfoliso. Or, maybe, we should set up some kind of collection bowl in which we obtain a dime every time someone asks us that inevitable question: “Have you ever considered shooting weddings?”