OPINION |
“Community” is a word that gets tossed around a lot in Springfield and in journalism.
The Hauxeda’s vision statement promises “to reinvent local news in Metro Springfield by telling the stories of our community, bringing issues to light, encouraging discourse and inspiring citizens to take action.”
The city’s 20-year growth plan, called Forward SGF, proclaims that its “…vision is supported by a series of goals and related strategies which will work collectively to achieve measurable change in the Springfield community.”
I have worked as a freelance photojournalist for the Daily Citizen since it launched, averaging one assignment each week. As a relative newcomer to Springfield, the work has played a big part in how I see our city.
I had two assignments in January that reminded me of my responsibilities to depict Springfield as best I can and to communicate messages of community.
Wayne Rader and his wife Susan purchased a building on Main Street adjacent to their historic tavern, Pappy’s Place, and announced plans to expand their live music offerings in the additional space. My photographs showed Wayne and Susie in happy embrace, customers enjoying lunch and early evening cocktails, decades-old dollar bills stapled to the ceiling and a menu from World War II. After an hour listening to Wayne being interviewed, I left thinking that I had made a new friend with deep roots in Springfield. Sadly, it was not to be. Wayne died less than a week after the story appeared. It felt like I had lost a friend I never knew. At his memorial service at the Gillioz Theatre, it was apparent that the community itself had lost a friend.
A few days after meeting the Raders, I attended a workshop on the dangers of sugar and managing diabetes. Diabetes is in the top three health concerns in Springfield and is especially a crisis among Black people who make up slightly more than 4 percent of the city’s population. It was important to make compelling photographs of the attendees to draw attention to this urgent story. In this case, the faces of the attendees draw the reader into the story. The concern they shared for each other and the seriousness with which they paid attention to the speakers may sound difficult to show in a photograph, but by listening and watching closely, I began to feel the room. It may sound odd, but sometimes photojournalists sense a moment and know that a telling gesture or expression is about to happen.
Good photojournalism reflects the community that it serves. I have worked for a local newspaper in Vermont, a national newspaper (USA TODAY), and now freelance for the Hauxeda. In each case, I have understood that I was the eyes of the reader for every story that I covered.
What attracts me to a story in other outlets is a compelling photograph, and if that photograph shows a person’s face or visually tells me a story, I am far more likely to want to read more.
Capturing Springfield’s community — its darkness and its light
I have been thinking about writing this column as the Daily Citizen approaches its one-year anniversary. In the past year, I had more than 50 assignments covering many of the most-read stories. Those were also among the most important and newsworthy stories the online-only news outlet’s reporters covered.
City officials and its citizens’ continued response to the COVID pandemic; the day care shortage crisis; the efforts to fight opioid overdoses; the primary victory of the soon-to-be elected next U.S. congressman who now represents Springfield in Washington, among many others.
(Photo by Jym Wilson)
All serious matters and all assignments where I knew I had to make one photograph that told the story and would make people want to closely read my colleagues’ words and look at the other accompanying photographs.
My work has not all been “eat your spinach because it’s good for you” journalism. There has been more than a little dessert. This being Springfield, there were stories to encourage folks to get outdoors and enjoy nature and fresh air. A package of stories and photographs to help neighbors build community (there’s that word again) introduced me to “Gus,” the neighborhood cat of Wildwood Estates. Teenage artist Sophie Bryan’s efforts to transform a wooden fence on Jefferson Avenue into an underwater ocean world made my day.
Brothers Dan and Mike Chiles’ work to establish a tree farm in Bois D’Arc and Fran Giglio’s annual tree-planting project in Phelps Grove Park are lessons in thinking about the planet in ways both large and small.
Lessons learned
As I reflected on this startup year, I spoke with several journalism experts. We all acknowledged that the industry is undergoing huge change. Print publications are closing or scaling back at drastic rates. The causes are more than this column can address, but there are reasons to be hopeful.
Jonathan Groves, Drury University professor, chair of the Communications Department and a former assistant managing editor at the Springfield News-Leader, told me, “We are even more a visual society now. I think of that Josh Hawley photo, [with his fist raised outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021], and it’s embedded in our mind. We have such a flooded, noisy landscape and much of it is miserable.”
Groves also offered an idea that sounds much like the Daily Citizen’s mission statement, “One of the movements in journalism is ‘solutions journalism.’ How we report and tell our community about its problems and what it can do to improve those problems.”
Sue Morrow, editor of the National Press Photographer Associations’ publication News Photographer acknowledges that photographers at news outlets like the Daily Citizen face challenges. Unlike many traditional newspapers that have moved online, the Daily Citizen does not publish large photo galleries. Rarely does the outlet publish more than five or six photographs with a story. Morrow finds that preferable. “I think that if it’s good, people are going to look at it. Maybe that’s too simplistic an answer, but people know quality. I don’t think quality is a 24-photo gallery slide show. I think it’s five or six really good pictures…with really good captions. Leave them wanting more.”
A large composite of 28 photographs that I made for the Daily Citizen last year hangs in my home office. It is a reminder of the community where I work. The Washington Post’s motto is “Democracy dies in darkness.” What better way to shine light than with a well-made photograph.
In the next year, I want to hear from readers. Email me with story ideas that have a strong visual component. Let me know if I get something wrong and if I can make it right. My email address is jymwil@gmail.com.
Jym Wilson is a freelance photojournalist who moved to Springfield in 2019. He was a photo editor at USA TODAY specializing in entertainment news coverage from 1997 until 2015. Prior to that, he was a staff photographer for Gannett News Service in Washington, DC covering a wide range of topics. His career began at the Burlington (VT) Free Press in 1977, where he started as the Sunday/Monday darkroom technician and left in 1993 having been a staff photographer and the newspaper’s photo department head. He still remembers his first page one photograph.