Wednesday, January 10, 2007

My Journalism Standards and Style

I thought it would make sense to write a series of posts about my views (see the my previous My Politics post) and the standards I will be holding myself to while writing about and shooting photos in Iraq.

Photojournalism:

You can trust that any photos that I post from Iraq will be "as shot" images of real events. This means that photos will not be altered in Photoshop, and that I have not created or altered the scenes being photographed in any way.

Exceptions to this would be obviously posed portraits, and still life photo illustrations of objects which have been arrange by me for composition purposes.

Writing style (commentary vs. news reporting):

In general when it comes to writing I would describe myself as more of a commentator at heart, than a reporter. I have feelings and opinions, I'm inclined to express them, and I hope that my perspective helps inform your opinions.

On this trip to Iraq I will be doing some of each: factual news reporting, and commentary on the events of the day with my experiences and opinions included. If I'm including my opinion it will be clearly noted, and I will speak in the first person. If an article doesn't include a first person account of myself, you can assume that I'm making every effort to give an unbiased account of events as I observed them.

My writing style:

I've never been a big fan of pesky details like grammar and punctuation. I never graduated from high school, largely because I failed English. I welcome you editorial corrections, just add a comment to the offending post (we're all a team here). Thanks!

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Day by Day, by Chris Muir (updated daily)



Chris Muir is the cartoonist that I met in Kuwait. He spent two weeks in Iraq at the same time I was there in February 2007, and so thought it would relevant to showcase his work on my site. Here is a link to Chris' humorous travelogue of this Iraq trip: http://billroggio.com/archives/2007/03/arrival_alignright_v.php