The Death of Photojournalism

I'm going to keep this short because I think Vincent Laforet's recent post sums up my thoughts fairly accurately, but stories like this one make me livid. From Rob's post:

Dear XXXXX,

We would like to publish your photo in Time Magazine in a year-end issue and also on Time.com. If you are the author of the photo and can give Time the rights to publish it, please send a high-resolution image to xxxxxxxx@timemagazine.com. While we can’t pay you for this use, we’ll give you an author’s photo credit with the published photo in the magazine and of course you retain the copyright.

Thank you for your participation.

Sincerely,

XXXXX

Time, I don't care how badly you're suffering right now, this is nothing short of taking advantage of photographers who simply don't know better and screwing over those who do. It's one thing to solicit unpaid contributions from photographers and writers in crowdsourcing-type projects; it's another thing entirely to value someone's work at, oh, NOTHING. And lowering publication standards to go with a free alternative is just sad.

Good photography will always be expensive.