As layoffs continue to decimate newsrooms all over the country, a pressing question for staff photographers is, what is plan B when the pink slip comes? How do you translate your photojournalism skills into some other means of earning a living?

A handful of former newspaper photographers with strong multimedia skills and some entrepreneurial drive are reporting at least one promising lead: the growing demand for story-driven video production from non-profits and corporations trying to build brands and markets through the Web in particular.

"NGOs and corporations are just now starting to see the power of multimedia stories," says Brian Storm, founder of MediaStorm. "A pr message has no authenticity. It won't go viral. Organizations are looking for a new way to get their message out, and journalists can play a role in that."


Story4

Now showing on the home page of the Big Sur Land Trust of Carmel, California, for instance, is a four-minute mini-documentary about the historical, physical and emotional connections Big Sur residents have with the land they live on. It's a promotional and fund-raising video with the look and feel of a newspaper multimedia story. And no wonder: It was produced by Geri Migielicz, Richard Koci Hernandez, and Dai Sugano, the Emmy Award-winning multimedia team employed until recently by the San Jose Mercury News. (Sugano is the only one still with the paper.)

Migielicz, who was the paper's director of photography, left in February to start Story4, an independent multimedia production company serving primarily non-profit organizations. Her partners are Cliff Schiappa, a former AP bureau chief, and Liza Culick, a non-profit business consultant. Koci Hernandez and Sugano are Story4 contributors.

"Knight-Ridder [owner of the Mercury News] was dissolving, and we thought there was a market for video content on the Web," Migielicz explains. "In a market that's crowded with messages, [organizations] have to communicate in an effective way. As journalists, we're used to boiling a story down to its essence, and conveying it in a concise, powerful way."

Big Sur Land Trust, she explains, "wanted to roll out a strategic plan with video rather than paper or speeches. The executive director is using a DVD in a pitch to organizations and donors. By design, it's a non-commercial mission statement." While the Web version is 4 minutes, the full-length DVD includes 26 interviews and runs about 15 minutes.

So far, Story4 has landed its present work and other projects by word of mouth. The company is currently finishing up post-production on a multimedia project for the Women's Foundation of California. The video will enable donors to see the foundation's projects and programs in action, and view the life stories of some of the foundation's clients.

Other projects are also on the horizon. "All of a sudden we're getting a lot of inquiries," Migielicz says.

Weyo

Meanwhile, across the country in Norfolk, Virginia, former Virginian-Pilot staff photographer Chris Tyree has launched a multimedia production company called Weyo with Stephen Katz, who is still a staff photographer at the paper and won POYi Newspaper Photographer of the Year honors in 2008. "We're trying to brand ourselves as storytellers to the non-profit world," Tyree says. Clients so far include Physicians for Peace, Resolve.org, and the Samaritan's Purse Canada, among others.

Tyree quit his job last August, right before a wave of layoffs hit The Virginian-Pilot. "It became obvious that stories I was interested in—about social justice and social responsibility—weren't getting [published] as much" because of budget pressures and cutbacks, Tyree explains.

He figured his storytelling skills would be in demand in the non-profit sector, despite that sector's history of spending little for photography and not using it very well. "Non-profits are the fastest-growing sector of the economy," he explains. "To be successful, they have to be run like businesses. It's very competitive. The question is, how do non-profits set themselves apart and brand themselves?"

At least some are investing more to tell their stories in compelling ways. Weyo recently landed a two-phase contract with Friends of Guest House, a non-profit that operates a halfway house for women in Alexandria, Virginia. Under the first phase of the contract, Weyo will upgrade the photography and other visuals on the Guest House Web site, and produce video interviews of some of the residents. The second phase of the contract calls for a 20-minute documentary film that Friends of Guest House will use to solicit donations from corporations.

"That film will present a raw look at life on the streets, really peeling back the lives of one or two of the [Guest House] clients," Tyree explains.


Freelance Multimedia Producers

While Tyree and Migielicz have launched multimedia production companies with partners and staff, other photographers are providing multimedia services as one-person operations. And the work seems to be coming in over the transom.

David Leeson, a Pulitzer-prize winning photographer who took a buyout from the Dallas Morning News last year, recently produced two separate videos for the engineering department of Southern Methodist University. He got hired for the job after someone from the university's marketing office happened to see a rough cut of an independent film about the war in Afghanistan that Leeson has been producing with Scott Kesterson.

The SMU video features interviews of department faculty about their research, and shows them at work in their labs. Parts of the video will be presented in a variety of contexts, from the department's Web site to academic conferences to Web sites of the individual faculty members, Leeson explains. "It's a vehicle for fund raising and showing off the department."

He has hired a business consultant to help him structure a multimedia company, and he's got good reasons to pursue it. Through the SMU projects, he realized how he could put his photojournalism skills to work for for other universities and corporations. "There are some great stories out there," he says. Meanwhile, freelance editorial assignments have nearly dried up. "I haven't had anybody call me about [shooting] stills" since leaving the paper, he says.

Another award-winning newspaper multimedia producer who asked to remain unidentified says he's produced a project for one corporate client, and now has a lucrative project offer from another. He says he's in a quandary about whether to quit his job. On the one hand, he expects to be laid off sooner or later. On the other, he worries about finding enough freelance corporate work to support his family.

"I'm trying to retain my job, but at the same time, I'm trying to build an exit strategy for myself," he says. "There are companies out there hiring former journalists to come in [and do] PR."

Transition Challenges

One challenge for would-be freelance multimedia producers is competition from established video production companies that are chasing corporate and non-profit PR work. Migielicz argues that producers with newspaper backgrounds are better storytellers by training, and can work faster and leaner.

Leeson says, "One thing you learn as a still photojournalist is how to get in and out and produce something with high quality. We know how to tell a story. We don't have to story board it, and go through all these pre-production meetings. All I need is a grasp of what the client is hoping for. In newspapers, you get an assignment with a basic outline of the story, and beyond that you're expected to find it."

Another challenge for laid off newspaper photographers is likely to be the entrepreneurial initiative required to start a freelance multimedia production business.

"A lot of photographers aren't creative about marketing, and aren't creative about business," Migielicz observes. "People in newspapers have a hard time seeing their skills as transferable. I see a lot of paralysis. It's, 'Oh my god this is going away what am I going to do?'"

But, she notes, if you've done multimedia production at your newspaper job, you have pitched and managed projects for a client: the newspaper that you worked for. Pitching and managing a project for another client—whether it's a non-profit, an NGO, or a private company—isn't such a leap.

For many newspaper photographers, however, the challenge is even more basic: getting multimedia skills in the first place. Most newspapers don't provide training, so photographers have to figure it out for themselves. The learning curve can be steep, and the tools are expensive. But the post-newspaper opportunities are shaping up to be better for photographers who've taken the time and trouble to build those skills.

Launching and Marketing a Production Company

To launch Weyo, founders Chris Tyree and Stephen Katz drew up a formal business plan with the help of family members who have backgrounds in finance. The plan projected Weyo's earnings and cash flow over the next three to five years based on estimates of how much revenue would be generated, and what the overhead and operating expenses would be. According to Tyree, they expected Weyo to lose money for the first three years. Seed money came from their savings, investments by family members, and credit cards. Katz and Tyree have kept costs to a minimum. So far the company has only three full-time employees (Tyree, creative director Christina Ullman and designer Alix Northrup). Weyo maintains a small production office, but most contributors work from home on a freelance basis, and photographers use their own still camera equipment. Contributor Roger Richards, a filmmaker, also has 8mm and 16mm movie cameras. Weyo has invested in some gear, including a Sony PMW EX3 video camera. They've also purchased an editing suite, including a Macbook Pro, a Mac Pro with a 30-inch monitor, plus Apple software that includes Final Cut, Logic Studio and Aperture. They also bought "a string of hard drives" to store image files. "We invested about $15,000, which is pretty frugal," Tyree says. "We were pretty fortunate to have some of our own gear to begin with." If they'd had to buy all the gear they're now using, Tyree estimates that the up-front equipment expense would have been $75,000 to $100,000. And still they need more gear—more lights, more powerful computers and more equipment generally as the staff grows. Weyo will have five full-time staff by the end of this year, and double that by the end of 2010, Tyree predicts. One of those staff members will be a full-time marketing director, which the company is now in the process of hiring. Initially, the marketing began with a Web site showcasing work Tyree and Katz had done for the Virginian-Pilot. Both relied initially on their extensive lists of professional contacts to help publicize Weyo by word-of-mouth. Several early jobs came in, for instance, through writers they had previously worked with who are now doing communications for non-profits. Tyree and Katz also made direct pitches to four organizations they wanted to work for, including Resolve.org, Physicians for Peace and Edmarc (all ended up hiring Weyo for various projects). Since then, Weyo has compiled a database of 250 potential clients. "Everyone contributed [names of] 10 or 15 organizations they'd like to work for," Tyree says. Weyo is now focusing on the top 50 prospects by researching their operations and analyzing their marketing. "Then we go in with an honest critique of what they've done and how we can help them. We show them other projects we've done before, and the results of those projects." Tyree says getting Weyo off the ground has required "lots of caffeine, and lots of late nights." But so far, so good. "What we've put in we've been able to make back," he says. "Now we're in a good position to go to the bank [for loans]. We've got a solid business plan, a track record, and a lot of business on the horizon."

Does Independent Multimedia Production Pay?

Fees paid by non-profits and corporations for multimedia production vary widely because the scope of each project is different. In the case of non-profits, some have marketing budgets and are prepared to pay, while others don't, says Weyo co-founder Chris Tyree. "So we work with fundraising consultants to look for grants for them." Weyo just finished one job that paid $10,000 for a 7-minute video and a Web site with "20-some" linked pages. Another recent job for a women's shelter paid $15,000 for similar work, "with some branding as well," Tyree says. Another shelter in Maryland paid Weyo $4,000 for a video and some still photography. "I was definitely paid better at the newspaper, but that's because we're just starting out," he says. Weyo now has its sights on bigger jobs, including a $110,000 proposal for one large non-profit, and a project proposal for a non-profit with a medical mission that would pay $70,000 per year for three years, if the project pans out. MediaStorm founder Brian Storm isn't disclosing any project budgets, but says his NGO and non-profit foundation clients pay two or three times as much as the editorial clients. "Corporate jobs are three to ten times more lucrative than editorial jobs," he says. "I might work six months on an editorial project and make half as much as I would working two weeks on a corporate job." Originally, MediaStorm tried to limit itself to editorial work. "But it's hard to say no to Starbucks," MediaStorm's first corporate client, Storm says. Not only was the pay good, but the brief called for a journalistic approach that was in keeping with MediaStorm's principles. Storm is now in discussions for more Starbucks work, as well as additional work for Saatchi & Saatchi, Starbucks' ad agency. "You can't rely only on editorial clients. You have to have a diverse business model, like freelance photographers do," Storm says. "The best ones have a very personal project they're working on, and other things fund that. We basically [take on projects for] money so that we can produce projects we believe in."