A Whole New BAG

Dear BAGnews Readers,

Sometime in the first months of 2010, BAGnewsNotes is going to change. We will still be the best site for decoding the spin of politics and images, but we’ll be redesigned to do it that much better. It won’t be a shallow makeover. We’ll be building on the old with new features, new tools, and new ways to grow this incredible community.

Everyone knows BAG as a great site for news image analysis and original photojournalism. What some may not realize is that your participation, the high level of analytic acuity and observation from the BAG community, makes this site what it is. The new BAGnews will recognize that and build on your energy and intellect. We’ll put eye-catching discussions front and center. It will be easy to track your contribution to great conversations. You’ll have a direct pipeline to submit recommended photos and interpretations for BAG to use in featured posts.

The new BAGnews will give you more. More original photography from great photojournalists. More posts from leading academics in the field. More access in one place to all Bag activities in different media. The old one-track method of chronological posting will make way for community input, diversity, and participation.

What won’t change: Michael Shaw’s insightful and unique take on the images that spin politics and culture, as well as inside access to the best shooters, analysts, and thinkers in photojournalism.

We’ll kick off the new BAGnews with new and familiar contributors including Robert Hariman and John Lucaites, co-authors of No Caption Needed, Pete Brook of Prison Photography, Stan Banos of Reciprocity Failure and Cara Finnegan of First Efforts, to be joined by others.

Our own Alan Chin will oversee a dedicated photojournalism section, BAGnews Originals, assisted by the talented Jason Andrew, bringing exciting photography to the site from new and familiar talents, including our renown Nina Berman. We will also be building out BAGnewsSalon, offering more interviews, multimedia, and key research from the academic world.

To help achieve our potential, however, we need your support. In the coming days, we’ll be asking for your contribution to help grow the site.

In the meantime, some of you may recognize my name from an occasional post or from my many comments (as Karen H.). To those who don’t, I’m just one of a few new faces you’ll be meeting as the new BAGnews launches. We may come from diverse backgrounds (mine is publishing, reporting, and law) but we all share an excitement about what BAGnews is and how the community can participate more fundamentally in the near future.

Watch this space for new information and previews of the new BAGnews. We think you’ll be just as excited about the future as we are.

Karen Hull

BAGnews Deputy Publisher