The "JOURNALIST" in Photojournalist

   Permit me to tell you a "Fish Story" that will illustrate my point.

How to spoil "Fresh Fish"    You are sketching out plans for your new Website online store. You've bought your domain name, FreshFishSoldHere.com.   On your home page, you decide your heading will be the domain name itself. And beneath "FreshFishSoldHere.com," you decide you'll have three links. Click here to buy Fresh Cod Click here to buy Fresh Salmon Click here to buy Fresh Halibut   It's brief. It's simple. And, you decide this could work pretty well. Then you turn your concept over to the "experts." To the web designer and programmer you've hired for your website you say, "Go for it guys. Call me when it's ready!" When it's "ready," your "experts" show your new FreshFishSoldHere.com, and here's what you find.   The heading is gone. In its place is a huge purple fish that covers the entire screen. Scattered randomly on top of this are three other fish in garish colors no fresh fish would ever wear. One is, you guess, a pink cod. It says, "fresh cod" in letters so tiny you can barely read them.   The next is, you guess, an orange salmon. It doesn't even have any text, which is now "implied," the designer informs you. When you pass the mouse over the "salmon" it glows in pale green. "Neat, huh?" the programmer says. "Neat" is not what springs to your mind. More like nausea.   And when you ask what happened to your original concept, the "experts" explain in "geek-speak" words you have never heard before all the "technical" reasons why your plan just wouldn't work on the Internet, and why their plan is "cool." You're not quite sure what "cool" means in this context, but it is one of the few words they use you recognize.

 Could this happen to your website plans? It not only can, it probably will, unless you have a real writer to work with your designer and programmer. Or better yet, one person who can do a good job of all three skills.
  And that's what an Internet Photojournalist is. A Photojournalist is a photographer who is also an accomplished Journalist, able to use words to accompany good photographs to effectively tell the story about your business, and what you can offer your customers.
  And an Internet Photojournalist is an accomplished writer who knows how to effectively communicate your business message on the new medium, the Internet, in the universal medium: plain English.

 If you have a website, or plan to have one, do you really want to trust the clear communication of your business message to your potential customers on the Internet to the "expert" designers and programmers who don't even speak the same language you do?
  Communicating effectively with words and pictures is something I began learning at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where I graduated in 1975 with a bachelor's degree in photojournalism. I have since polished and honed those skills during 21 years of experience as a writer, photographer and editor of weekly and daily newspapers, all in the central North Carolina Piedmont region.

My website portfolio.