Talk:List of photojournalists

How to improve this dreadful list

What a sorry mess this article is. In the last few edits, another editor and myself have removed

• Daniel Colegrove, whose article adduces only the sketchiest of evidence for photojournalism
• Paul Couvrette, whose article doesn't claim any experience of photojournalism (the closest he gets is posed portraits of "newsmakers")
• Melissa Springer, whose claims to be a photojournalist have bristled with {{fact}} tags for over a year
• Various people who may for all I know be photojournalists but who lack articles
• [Unspecified] "award-winning"
• Mentions of obscure awards and honors
• Description of somebody's œuvre as "[including] the picture of John Selwyn Gummer feeding his daughter a burger at the height of the BSE crisis" (not one of the news photos that springs to my mind)
• Other miscellaneous crap.

I'm sure there's more where that came from.

I see this page as a mixture of famous photojournalists (Capa), worthy photojournalists whose names are little known outside histories of photography (Beato), obscure but worthy people, the fleetingly newsworthy (Nagai, who's hardly a photojournalist at all), and a certain number who have been vigorously promoted (even spammed) in Wikipedia.

Worse, I think it will remain a mess at least until some criteria for "photojournalist" and "notability" are set. I don't claim to have solutions to either, but how about these as first attempts:

Both

• (A) photojournalist: contributor of photographs to one or more newspapers, news magazines, news agencies or news photo agencies that themselves have WP articles

and

• (B) notable, meaning one or more of:
  • Subject of critical commentary as a photojournalist
  • Photojournalism has been collected to constitute at least one book put out by a reputable publisher
  • Winner of a photojournalism award that's given to no more than three people per year, that's international in scope (or national for a nation with a population of at least 20 million), and that has an article in English-language WP.

(Other photojournalists may merit articles, but they wouldn't merit a listing here.)

How's that? -- Hoary (talk) 00:44, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree this list has been a mess for quite a while, and I agree with the attempts to rid the list of non-notable spam. Without scrubbing out photographers who are not notable as photojournalists, the list is not meaningful. The emphasis should clearly be put on your two criteria: verifiable work as a news photographer, and notability in photojournalism. I would offer up as at test example, the fine photographer Roman Vishniac who is currently on this list. I admire both Vishniac's photography and the social purposes for which he employed his talent. Yet, I don't believe that he merits inclusion on a list of photojournalists - he was a skilled portraiturist and an amazing documentary photographer. But for all his skill as a photographer, Roman Vishniac's article has no evidence that he was a photojournalist. As such, I think we should remove his name from this list and should likewise remove any names with less of a connection to photojournalism. TheMindsEye (talk) 05:13, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I certainly admire Vishniac's work too; offhand I've no idea about how he worked.

How about starting to add footnoted evidence for both your criteria? When this is done, we can then weed out the interlopers. -- Hoary (talk) 14:05, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

The two criteria listed above sound like a good benchmark. It might be worthwhile to list some of the awards that are considered ligit for the puproses of this list. Just a thought. Photoarchiver (talk) 06:31, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Unsourced

Nothing in this article is sourced (see WP:V). I suggest creating a photojournalist category and dispensing with this article entirely. Rklawton (talk) 21:17, 26 February 2011 (UTC)