Denver Rocky Mountain News photo staff shaken by Columbine tragedy

Janet Reeves was in the morning editorial meeting when the first news crackled in over the police scanner. The time was 11:25 a.m., the date, April 20, 1999. At that instant, just five minutes after the first call went into 911, Reeves knew there had been a shooting at Columbine High School. She had no idea that the events of the next few hours would seize the attention of the world, overshadow the war in Kosovo, and put her photo staff at the center of a controversy that is unfolding to...

Photographer Ed Kahsi, featured in our profile traveled with Kurdish rebels in Iraq to capture this image for one of a series of personal projects on the world's minorities and dispossessed peoples.

Since our spring issue, several events have drawn my attention to a phenomenon that has been intensifying dramatically for the last five years or so: the news media's tendency to sensationalize stories. Whether it be the downfall of a celebrity, a senseless shooting, or a natural disaster, all segments of the news industry seem to be embracing these stories with zeal.

We are living in the age of the big story, and each new story seems to get bigger than the last. Witness the Oklahoma City bombing, the O.J. Simpson murder trials, Princess Diana's passing, President Clinton's sexual transgressions and subsequent impeachment, the war in Kosovo, the Columbine shootings, JFK Jr.'s passing, and the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd. The subjects are put under a microscope while the public lives vicariously...

Home: San Francisco

Favorite Gear: "I’m not much of a gear hound," Ed Kashi says. "I use Leicas, a Minolta CLE with Leica lenses, and the Canon EOS-3.

Recent Assignments: California Department of Forests’ firefighters for Smithsonian Magazine; indigenous peoples living on Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines...

In the worlds hot spots, Ed Kashi finds the simple lives behind the news.

Ed Kashi has been a freelance photographer since 1979, but he is barely a decade into his second career, the one that gives meaning to his life. To page through his portfolio is to watch him slowly abandon the parachute journalism many young photographers dream of, deliberately turning his back on a high-profile day-rate career that was gathering him more than 350 assignments a year.

Now darting among the ruins of breaking news stories...

Photographers try new styles while casting a wary eye toward the digital world

It’s been 10 years now since the gentle first wave of digital photography licked the beaches of the profession. Even in the days when $1,200 scanners and $10,000 digital cameras were the rule, a few dreamers saw in those early ripples a coming reinvention of the business, and a new golden age of photojournalism.

And why not? With technology providing virtually free reproduction, instant publishing, and a worldwide distribution made possible by the Internet, every barrier to competition was going to be removed...

MSNBC finds documentary photo packages provide visual relief for click-weary web readers

On this Friday afternoon, MSNBC’s online photo director, a former college baseball shortstop with close-cropped hair and an easy grin, huddles in a humming corner of the high-tech MSNBC newsroom on the Microsoft main campus in Redmond, Wash.

He fields questions from seven different photo and audio editors as he flips channels on his computer/TV monitor, reviewing a dozen video feeds and a swirling demo of a future interactive TV version of the MSNBC Web site. Finally, he clicks to MSNBC’s next cover page, due to hit the site in three minutes....

Since our spring issue, several events have drawn my attention to a phenomenon that has been intensifying dramatically for the last five years or so: the news media’s tendency to sensationalize stories. Whether it be the downfall of a celebrity, a senseless shooting, or a natural disaster, all segments of the news industry seem to be embracing these stories with zeal.

We are living in the age of the big story, and each new story seems to get bigger than...