Picturing a quality local news visual: Perspectives from non-specialist journalists

Abstract

This study explores a key question around local visual news: what do non-specialist journalists regard as a quality news visual? This study focuses on still images as the most ubiquitous building block in the local visual news landscape, whether as thumbnails that are shared with links on social media platforms, as hero images accompanying articles, as photo galleries, or as still frames extracted from videos. Much of what we know about a quality news visual comes from the perspectives of visually literate specialists: photo editors, photojournalists, and related roles. Yet, despite the ubiquity of photographs within print and digital news, they are increasingly being made not by staff photojournalists but, rather, by freelancers, words-based reporters, or community members. As these dynamics have shifted over the past two decades, scholarship has struggled to keep up with how non-specialist journalists define the attributes and properties of a quality news visual. This study aims to address this gap within the context of local and regional news using an interview-based approach and finds that interviewees most commonly defined quality news photographs through the lens of news values, followed by technical considerations and narrative dimensions, aesthetics, the perceived effect the visual had on the audience, how the visual was made and presented, and who or what was photographed.

Introduction

Amber ¹ is a journalist in outback Australia covering a region that takes about 2.5 hours to drive across. The population here, as in the majority of non-capital cities, is diffuse (Smailes et al., 2002). The region Amber covers, for example, boasts some 13,000 people spread out over some 60,000 km². Amber has a bevy of duties as a journalist, including attending and covering events, interviewing sources, editing contributor submissions, writing 20-30 news and feature stories of her own each week to fill a 40-page newspaper and feed its website, and managing her news outlet’s social media presence. Moreover, she is also responsible for making roughly half of the photos that are published (the other half are contributed) and making the occasional video, about once a month, for the website or for social media. This is a tall order that require diverse skillsets, including some like photography and videography, that Amber hasn’t formally been taught. In her words:

I can tell when a photo has been done right, but I don’t know how to actually make that photo happen. If you showed me a really good photojournalist's photo, I could say, ‘Yeah, that's a really great photo because of this, this, and this.’ But when I go to take a photo, I have no idea how to take the photo. I've never been taught.

Amber’s situation is similar to many local journalists in regional communities in Australia and reflects a number of key trends and developments in the industry more broadly. For example, since the early 2000s, dedicated staff photojournalists have become less and less common as outlets have either turned to freelancers or asked their reporting staff to do more and to write as well as photograph and videorecord (Hudson, 2023; Mortensen and Gade, 2018; Thomson, 2018a). Relevant, too, is the rise of so-called “citizen photojournalists” (Allan, 2017; Grayson, 2017) who are increasingly contributing to visual news by directly submitting images or videos to the local news outlet or by journalists finding that content on social media and integrating it into their reporting.

These non-specialised staffers, like many community members, often lack training in visual forms of journalism but the prevailing norm by many news outlets is that any image is better than no image (Mortensen and Keshelashvili, 2013), leading to a wide variance in the types and qualities of news visuals online (Caple, 2017). These dynamics also lead to questions about the role and purpose of news images and to the qualities that journalists think they should possess.

It is within these questions that the present study is situated. This study’s objective is to learn, from the perspective of so-called “all-rounder” journalists producing news in regional areas, what they perceive as a quality news visual, which we operationalise in this paper as a quality news photograph ² . As the literature review that follows demonstrates, scholars have some understanding of this question from the perspective of “visually literate” practitioners—mainly photojournalists and photo editors—but lack an equivalent understanding from all-rounder journalists who might lack visual training but, nonetheless, are still required to make or source photographs in addition to their other journalistic responsibilities.

During the “visual age” we’re living in, where photographs form the building blocks for much of the content we see in print and online (Thomson, 2021; Thomson and Bock, 2023), critically interrogating the roles and purposes of these images while also exploring the intents and aspirations of those who produce them, is essential to shine light on this proportionately under-studied aspect of the news ecosystem and to inform scholarship and practice on how news images are created and published. Similarly, focusing on local news in regional areas is important because previous scholarship indicates that local news performs different functions to metropolitan news but we lack a sufficient understanding of if or how these functions are manifested in the visual dimensions of news at the local level (Caple, 2019; Gulyas and Hess, 2024). We know most about Australian photojournalism through the perspectives of “elite” photographers at large news outlets in urban parts of the country but lack a commensurate understanding from non-specialist local reporters who make visuals in addition to their other duties (Caple, 2019). Hearing from these non-specialist voices about what they think of as a quality news visual is important to provide parity to the existing perspectives from the visually literate and urban elite that dominate much of photojournalism scholarship.

To these ends, the literature review that follows begins by exploring scholarship focused on the attributes of award-winning news photographs and on professional discourse related to the same. It continues with an overview of key dynamics in the local and regional journalism landscape. Taken together, this literature review provides a sense of how visually literate professionals view the roles and purposes of photojournalism, outlines the core attributes of regional news, and builds a foundation that allows for the empirical analysis of how non-specialists view this aspect of their work.

Literature review

Award-winning photojournalism content and discourse

One of the chief signals on what the industry regards as “quality” comes from photojournalism competitions, such as World Press Photo. These competitions, often judged by photo editors and photojournalists, are viewed as benchmarks of what professional journalists think is the best work in the field and, by rewarding this, set a benchmark on what their colleagues should strive for (Jenkins and Volz, 2018).

Evaluating the scholarship on discourse surrounding photojournalism competition judging and analyses of award-winning photojournalistic work provide a rich overview of what arguably visual literate professionals think is high-quality photojournalism. Early work in this vein (Kim and Smith, 2005; Greenwood and Smith, 2007) found that, over decades of photojournalism competitions, the work judges assessed as the best was negative in valence, drawing on news values like conflict (Caple, 2018), and was non-representative and focused on a narrow range of themes, such as war, poverty, and other social problems, and places. Other research conducted in this same period identified aspects of the image, such as novelty (Mendelson, 1999), and attributes of the photographer, such as courage (Kim and Smith, 2005), as being influential for award-winning work while photography historians like Gefter (2006) suggest that “in photojournalism, the subject is considered more important than the aesthetics of the image” (p. 26).

More recent scholarship (e.g., Carmona et al., 2018) has focused on award-winning sports photojournalism and found that a strong focus on the human element (by drawing on the “personalisation” news value [Caple, 2018]), highlighting impact ³ , and demonstrating technical prowess are central to this genre of photojournalism. A large study (Godulla, et al., 2021) that analysed 60 years of World Press Photo award-winning images found that the negativity in photographs that earlier research identified also persisted into the present. It also identified that conflict, along with “society” images, were the top two most-popular image categories over this period.

Scholars have critiqued award-winning photojournalism for being problem-focused and negative (Lough and McIntyre, 2019; Midberry and Dahmen, 2020; Midberry et al., 2020). These scholars call, instead, for photojournalism that adopts a solutions-oriented frame and presents opportunities alongside problems. At the same time, other scholars who have analysed award-winning photojournalistic work (Greenwood and Smith, 2007) note the logistical difficulties inherent in attempting less episodic work and argue that such work requires significant resources and institutional investment that might not be there. As such, attention to market dynamics and organisational realities is necessary when evaluating news images and the types of narratives they can portray.

Discourse-focused studies of judging commentary during photojournalism competitions (e.g., Lough, 2019) found that capturing (storytelling) “moments” and making emotionally resonant images were aspects the judges said they most highly valued in the assessed images. News values, technical proficiency, and aesthetic considerations, were all secondary. Regarding aesthetic considerations, the study found that cropping and depth/layering were the two most frequently discussed components. In contrast, principles like rule of thirds or the camera angle were “absent or rarely heard in the discussion” (p. 315).

Bringing together scholarship on these disparate press photo competitions and judges’ comments from multiple time periods allows for an understanding of how persistent or variable the characteristics of award-winning news images, and the attributes of those who make them, are. Specifically, the negativity and problem-oriented focus of much award-winning photojournalism is quite consistent over the years, especially for more distant or marginalised subject matter, as is the focus on the human element and on “storytelling” images. Less clear is the degree to which aspects like novelty, courage, and aesthetics are as consistently regarded over time.

Local and regional news

As this article’s opening anecdote foreshadowed, local and regional journalists are “very busy multitaskers who work across a range of platforms, roles, and stories” (Fisher, et al., 2020, p. 6). For example, from a survey of 307 regional Australian journalists, the vast majority identified with the omnibus “reporter” role while fewer than 2% identified as occupying a visual-specific role (Fisher, et al., 2020). Despite this, the journalists surveyed nominated social media and the need for more visual content as the two biggest changes in journalism over the past 5 years. This reinforces the notion that journalists who mainly write are also increasingly being expected to produce visuals and underscores the importance of understanding how they understand this more specialised role and perceive “quality” news visuals given the increased importance they play in everyday news production and presentation.

As noted earlier, paying attention to market forces and organisational realities is necessary when discussing what counts as “quality” news and whether journalists have the training, time, and resources to deliver this. As such, the following section overviews some of these dynamics within the local and regional news environment in Australia, where the present study was conducted, to provide context and nuance on these aspects.

Regional journalists in Australia perceive that insufficient time is the greatest obstacle to doing their jobs effectively, followed by a lack of resources and difficulties imposed by geographical distance (Fisher, et al., 2020). All these aspects affect the type of visual news that is published and how it is sourced. As a uniquely embodied form of journalism (Bock, et al., 2018), visual journalists can’t “call it in” unlike other reporters who can use myriad mediated technologies to obtain quotes and source materials. Having to physically be present to report the news for one’s local community means deciding whether the cost (in terms of all-important time but also in terms of fuel and vehicle wear-and-tear) is worth it to be on-site visually documenting an event. If not, reporters might choose to forego visuals entirely, use generic (stock or file) assets, ask an attendee to send through photos on their behalf, or try to source some visuals from relevant social media (Allan, 2017).

Understanding how non-specialist journalists in regional communities conceptualise “quality” local news visuals—in terms of technical aspects, aesthetic considerations, storytelling potential, or other attributes—can inform which stories they can cover themselves and which they have to ignore or have to outsource. This can also inform areas for future staff training and development or for organisational resourcing decisions. Given the overall lack of attention in the literature to non-specialist journalists’ perceptions of visual news quality, this study proposes the following research question:

RQ: how do non-specialist journalists working in regional parts of Australia conceptualise a quality local news photograph? What are the implications of this for scholarship and journalistic practice?

The section that follows outlines the methods used to approach this question and how the resulting data were analysed and theorised.

Methods

Data sites and sampling

This project adopted an interview-based approach to assess how regional journalists living in Australia conceptualised a quality news photograph. On-site interviews began in Tasmania in September 2022 and continued in Queensland and Western Australia through the end of the year. These states (Queensland and Western Australia) were selected because they have been the most affected by recent disruptions, newsroom downsizes, and journalistic reductions in service following the COVID-19 pandemic (Dickson, 2021). Meanwhile, as the only non-contiguous state or territory in Australia, Tasmania was chosen due to its unique attributes, including being Australia’s least-populous and most decentralised state. In all, 16 interviews were conducted (15 face-to-face ones and one interview over the phone).

A purposive sampling approach was used to identify and recruit participants. Specifically, the study sought journalists who were non-specialists (not photojournalists or other “visually literate” roles) and were working outside metropolitan areas in regional communities in Australia. With the exception of two regional centres (with an average population of about 100,000), the average number of people living in the communities the journalists interviewed for this study were working in was around 10,000. Participants were recruited from the researcher’s network and from referrals by other participants (as a form of chain-referral or “snowball” sampling). The following section describes the attributes of the participants and the news organisations they worked for.

Participant and news outlet characteristics

Participants were younger (the average age was 33.18 and the range was from 22 to 62 years) and possessed an average of 8.86 years’ of journalism experience (the range was from under 1 year to 37 years). The participant pool included nine men and seven women. Three-quarters of the sample had a journalism degree. The remaining quarter had no formal journalism training in university but one had an apprenticeship and one had a cadetship. Participants worked for two daily newspapers (both were in the regional centres), eight weekly newspapers, two fortnightly publications, and three online-only news outlets. Four of these were owned by large media conglomerates, six were owned by medium-sized conglomerates, four were independently owned, one was a regional hub of the publicly owned national broadcaster, and one was owned by a small, family-owned conglomerate. Thus, the participant pool represented a range of ownership and business models.

Data collection and analysis approach

Considering again the time-poor nature of regional journalists (Fisher, et al., 2020), on-site visits were prioritised whenever possible to demonstrate an investment in learning from specific individuals and valuing their unique knowledge and insights, to obtain richer data (through observations as well as interviews), and to allow the interviews to be conducted at the time and in the manner that best-suited the participants (for example, some interviews were conducted in the car while the journalists drove from their base to a story they were covering).

Automated transcripts were generated and then manually corrected before coding. The coding and analysis process started with several rounds of full-transcript reviews to allow the researchers to “soak” in the data and become familiar with the range of participant responses. After this, various concepts from the literature (e.g., specific aesthetics principles; news values; and emotive and technical qualities) were identified and relevant aspects in the transcripts were coded as such. Concepts that weren’t represented in the literature were also developed and included in the model that is presented in the findings section.

Findings

In this section, we first present the results of our interviews to answer the study’s research question and provide a non-specialist industry perspective on what a quality local news visual is. We have distilled participants’ descriptors into higher-level categories when possible and present these categories alongside participants’ own words to balance the abstract with the concrete and to achieve the “thick description” that Geertz (2008) advocated for. Following this, we propose a hierarchically situated model of the dimensions that allows us to discuss how feasible they are within everyday local news practice and how the dimensions might compare to those identified by professional photojournalists.

Industry perspectives on a quality local news visual

News values dimension

When asked to define a quality news visual (photograph), participants most frequently (n = 14) mentioned aspects connected with news values. The most frequently invoked of these news values, with 10 mentions, was personalisation, or providing a human face or perspective to a story. Representative responses included:

• We know that people like photos of people. Putting people at the centre of stories is the most engaging thing for readers. It’s just unequivocal.

• I would say it needs to include people. It’s faces that make that story.

• We always try and get faces in the photos. It brings more personality to the story.

A closely related and sometimes overlapping news value to personalisation was proximity. The journalists interviewed said that faces drew the eye and engaged audiences but that local faces, in particular, were even more engaging and relevant for a local audience. This allowed the audience to keep tabs on what their friends and neighbours were doing as well as to differentiate the local news content from the other content audiences are encountering each day. In this way, local faces (and the corresponding news values of personalisation and proximity) allowed the news outlet to differentiate its content and increase its perceived relevance. Representative responses from participants included:

• I always want local faces in my pictures, because that's a whole group of people who could see my story on Facebook or on the website and go, ‘Oh, hey! That's my local barista,’ or ‘Oh, that's my cousin,’ or something like that.

• I think I've used a stock photo once. I really don't like to because it's very local news and therefore everyone knows everyone. If you can get a photo of someone, a lot of people are going to know them because everyone knows everyone and the story is going to do better. It makes it look more genuine because it's not a stock photo, which is rubbish.

The third and final news value participants obliquely invoked, uniqueness, was mentioned only once and was relevant for trying to provide a “point of difference” even among other sources of (non-journalistic) news and information. In this participant’s words:

There's stuff going on social media all the time. I don't want to use the same photos that are published on there if somebody's already seen them, especially being a weekly. You want to have fresh content. You want it to look like you've done it. So, a lot of the time, I might ring up someone and be like, ‘Can we set something up?’ or, ‘Can you take another photo? Can it be this?’

The technical and narrative dimensions

Attributes and qualities that comprised the next two dimensions—the technical and the narrative—were both mentioned by participants 12 times.

Technical dimension

Most frequently mentioned (n = 5) within the technical domain were aspirations to have the image be in focus and not blurry. Participants were also keen that the photo evidenced “good” lighting (n = 4), which participants implicitly operationalised as the quality of light rather than the amount of light. As such, when discussing this aspect, participants mentioned particular times of the day (e.g., golden hour) or locations (outdoors compared to indoors) as generally offering a better quality of light. They also mentioned proper exposure (n = 2), which participants defined as having a photo that wasn’t too dark or too bright. The remaining two technical considerations, each mentioned once, were that the photo should evidence good timing (which was especially important in sports photography, participants said) and that the image should be of sufficient resolution to be published.

Narrative dimension

Regarding the narrative dimension, participants here were most focused on the so-called “storytelling” quality of an image (n = 6). Here, participants said the most quality news photos avoided cliches (such as “big check” photos and “line of kids” in a school photo) and instead could “take the story forward on their own merits.” Participants said storytelling images weren’t literal and obvious and didn’t just “fill a space.” Instead, storytelling images “show” rather than “tell.”

The notion of consonance was also prevalent within the narrative dimension and was implicitly invoked five times. A consonant image, participants said, matched the mood or tenor of the accompanying story or headline. As an example, a participant mentioned a story about a resident being unhappy with the local city council and said a photo of the resident, ideally not smiling, with the council in the background would be an appropriate and high-quality image. Participants said they sometimes needed to “boss your talent around” to get them to look the right way and “tell them how they need to look.” An alternate strategy for achieving consonant images, participants said, is to take multiple photos with multiple expressions so one has flexibility in using the photo that best matches the mood of the story once the final angle has been decided.

The final aspect within the narrative dimension was the quality of the accompanying photo caption. A literal caption that just describes the photo “means almost nothing,” participants said. Instead, participants said they were encouraged to write captions that offered more context and provided something, such as a quote or statistic, to make the caption worth reading.

The aesthetics dimension

Aspects comprising the next dimension, aesthetics, were mentioned by participants 10 times. Participants here were most focused on composition and mentioned this seven times. This included intentional positioning of the subject, appropriate use of white space (which often meant getting closer to “fill the frame”), and considering various “layers” in the image (both in terms of thinking about depth but also in terms of the background and ensuring it is distraction-free). Also within the aesthetics domain were aspirations to use colour effectively (mentioned by two participants) and vary the camera angle to achieve visual variety (mentioned by one participant).

The psycho-physiological dimension

The fifth domain, the psycho-physiological dimension, was comprised of qualities and attributes related to audience perception and reaction and was mentioned five times. Participants here were aiming to make images that provoked a response in the viewers and “made them feel something.” Participants acknowledged the potential of words to have an (emotional) impact but regarded the visual as being able to provoke this response more easily. Participants also said they looked for “funny things” to document and that the perceived attractiveness of the subject also affected how well the story did or how much attention editors gave to it.

Production and presentation circumstances

The sixth domain, production and presentation circumstances, was comprised of elements that influenced how the images were made or how they were published. It was mentioned three times. One participant said they thought quality news photos were those that were candid. Such “action” shots where people don’t even know they’re being filmed or photographed were more authentic and natural and were preferable to more posed situations. In contrast, one participant said they preferred when the subject of the picture looked directly at the camera. For this participant, that direct engagement between camera and subject led to a more engaging photo where the audience is discursively engaged with the subject in a less detached and more involved way (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2020). The final aspect within this domain was that the news photo was displayed at an appropriate size. In this participant’s words:

I hate it when a photo is too small and you can't tell anything. We've had a big issue with that in one of our recent papers. You need to give it [the photo] the space that it deserves, especially if it has writing on it or if it has some action on it that's important to look at. If you make it too small, it's wasted and might as well not be there.

Representational dimension

The final domain, the representational dimension, concerned who or what was photographed. It was mentioned by only a single participant, who said quality news photos were those that depicted kids or animals as “people love kids” and animals also make interesting subjects in this journalist’s estimation. As such, this participant tried to schedule interviews when kids were home from school so they could be included in resulting photos.

Interactions among the dimensions of a quality local news visual

Before progressing further, it is necessary to discuss the extent to which these dimensions may or may not work together within a non-specialist and local journalism context. Paying attention to which of these dimensions are in potential tension and how these tensions operate is necessary to provide nuance to this discussion and to potentially inform photojournalistic practice within the local news context. As but one example, participants said they valued photos with local faces and generally regarded more photos as better. However, ironically, while including more photos does potentially increase the number of local faces that can be featured, it also decreases the sizes of these, which can negatively impact on the audience’s reception. In one participant’s words, “If you make it [the photo] too small, it’s wasted and might as well not be there.” Similarly, while the journalists interviewed seem to want to avoid visual cliches with the images they published, this value isn’t necessarily shared with news audiences who are helping shape local visual news by the photos they directly contribute or that journalists find online and embed into their stories. This ambition is also potentially challenged by conventions found in other types of photographic contexts, including posing for the camera and smiling, that can inform community members’ “photographic behavior” and how this is performed for the (news) camera (Desfor, 1980).

Potentially in tension, too, are the aspirations to, on one hand, capture images that evidence attention to aesthetics and, on the other hand, to capture images that are candid, evidence good timing, and are in focus and not blurry. Participants placed more weight on getting technically proficient photos—ones that are in focus, not blurry, and of sufficient resolution—over aesthetic considerations. Likewise, the desire to achieve consonance and have the mood or tenor of the image match the tone of the accompanying story is in tension with the desire for candid photos and the need to sometimes “boss your talent around” to get them to look the right way and to “tell them how they need to look.”

Despite the heavy emphasis participants implicitly placed on news values in their definitions of a quality news visual, whether the visuals reflect any news values at all and, if so, which ones they do, is outside the direct control of journalists for the potentially high proportion of community contributed or crowdsourced images that find their ways into local news. The relevant news values, such as proximity and consonance, that local journalists prized in local visual news stand in stark contrast to others, such as conflict and negativity, that tend to dominate elite photojournalism competitions.

Lastly, the desire to capture images with “storytelling quality” that show rather than tell is potentially in tension with the realities of local news environments where human resources are often stretched thin and where the tyranny of distance and lack of time often mean that more literal and less evocative images, such as discussions at a city council meeting, are made and published rather than more storytelling images, such as taking the time to go out and photograph who or what is being affected by what the city council is discussing.

Hierarchically situating the dimensions of a quality local news visual

Although participants mentioned some dimensions, such as the narrative one, more often than others, such as ones related to aesthetics, not each of these dimensions is equally feasible given the unique attributes of the local news environment. For this reason, the following section situates the dimensions of a quality local news visual into a hierarchy from the most routine and feasible to the most aspirational. These dimensions and their place in the hierarchy are products of the local news environment and might be different in a different environment or if professional photojournalists were instead interviewed.

Production and presentation circumstances, which we operationalise as camera-independent factors (such as whether the action recorded is candid, the size of the visual, and other viewing conditions, etc.), are the foundational layer of this hierarchy as they affect all the other dimensions. Having an explicit dimension dedicated to this aspect is important as it raises the visibility of the factors in front of and behind the lens—such as awareness of being observed and how that can affect behaviour or whether the action is posed or candid—that can markedly affect who or what is shown and in which ways as well as how the audience reacts to the resulting depictions (Thomson, 2019).

The second dimension—technical—is operationalised as camera-dependent factors (such as the image’s resolution, its focus, how camera settings have influenced how motion is rendered, and its exposure) that influence the perception of a single image. These are often basic attributes that affect whether the image can be seen and appreciated. For example, too bright or dark an image can render its details illegible; too much motion blur can render the details unintelligible; and an out-of-focus or pixelated image can also potentially diminish the reality that the viewer experienced and that the image tries to reproduce. At the same time, technical skills can also be used strategically (or can be neglected) with various consequences. As an example of the former, a person experiencing domestic violence might be backlit and thus underexposed as a means of protecting their privacy while still visualising their story. As an example of the latter, audiences sometimes perceive the blurry and grainy visuals of so-called citizen photojournalists as more authentic than the work of professionals (Allan, 2017). Participants in this sample said they largely lacked training in making photographs and videos and, instead, made liberal use of the “auto” mode on their standalone or smartphone cameras.

The third dimension—representational—focuses on who or what is shown in a straightforward way. It is analogous to the denotative function of images (their literal expressions) as contrasted with their connotative functions (what they mean) (Aiello, 2006). As an example, audiences around the world can recognise a photograph of a woman as depicting a person; however, the attributes and qualities of femininity and what it means to be a woman are much more culturally specific (and contested). Participants in the sample said they are often unable to go out just to make photos or videos but can make some if they’re already there to do an interview. These realities affect who or what is represented in local visual news.

The fourth dimension—aesthetics—focuses on the way the image is composed. It is concerned with the relationship between positive and negative space, colour, angles, depth and layering, and the positioning of elements within the frame. Again, considering the lack of participants’ formal training in visual news and the altered sense of aesthethics that smartphone camera hardware and software encourages for the many journalists who use an iPhone or equivalent to take photos or make videos (Thomson and Uddin, 2023), the participants’ sense of aesthetics likely contrasts markedly with those of specialists.

The fifth dimension—psycho-physiological—concerns how the viewer reacts to what is shown. The physiological aspects of perception are influenced by technical considerations (such as contrast, exposure, blur, and resolution) while the psychological aspects can be affected by the preceding dimensions (such as the beauty of an artfully captured geometric composition or the emotion felt by seeing a familiar or unfamiliar “other” or circumstance). Here, personal experience and subjectivity play a role in what is emotive and resonant. A photograph of a family member might provoke a different reaction for someone else in the same family than it might for a stranger. This can, of course, be affected by the use of allusions to art and history (such as the pietà) that might provoke an emotion due to the more universal resonance of a particular subject or interaction even if the viewer is a stranger to who or what is depicted.

The sixth dimension—news values—refers to the constructed categories, such as personalisation, proximity, impact, conflict, prominence, etc., that journalists and scholars have identified in some contexts as being influential criteria for what can be considered as newsworthy (see Caple, 2018, for an overview). These are more latent and implicit characteristics that require familiarity to understand, apply, and identify. For example, to appreciate whether a represented person is prominent or proximate will depend on who is seeing the image and their familiarity with the specific person or type of person being shown.

The seventh and final dimension—narrative–concerns the storytelling quality of the image; whether it merely shows something literally or tells a bigger story about the content represented or about an aspect of the human condition. Due to the resource-intensive nature of showing rather than telling, from the raw time required to travel to a relevant location as well as the time necessary to earn trust with sources (Thomson, 2018b), this layer is at the top of the hierarchy and is aspirational in nature. The narrative layer applies to content within the frame as well as extends beyond it. For example, it concerns whether the image is consonant with or dissonant to an accompanying headline and also how other aspects of news design, such as layout and accompanying colour treatments, can affect how the image is “read” and understood.

Discussion

In contrast to previous research that has studied quality news visuals through an indirect or piecemeal fashion (e.g., through evaluating award-winning work or analysing professional discourse around photo competitions), this study directly centres its attention on defining quality local visual news as conceptualised by non-specialist journalists. In doing so, the article is able to propose a hierarchically situated model of the dimensions of a quality local news visual that is directly informed by industry perceptions. This model includes seven dimensions that not only synthesise but also extend extant literature on the quality of local visual news.

Reflecting on the findings and putting them in conversation with extant literature reveals several insights. The first concerns scholarly understandings of news values and how these might differ between specialists/non-specialists and those in urban/international and non-urban/domestic contexts. The non-specialised journalists in this sample obliquely referred to three news values in their assessment of what makes a quality news visual: personalisation, proximity, and uniqueness. The uniqueness news value complements Mendelson’s (1999) study that highlighted the importance of novelty in quality news visuals but absent were the news values, such as conflict and impact, that are present in award-winning work from international photojournalism competitions and from professional discourses about what specialists value (Carmona et al., 2018; Godulla et al., 2021). Largely absent, also, in the participants’ definitions were attributes of the photographer. Participants tended to focus most on the content itself than on the attributes of the people producing that content (though there is the potential for some overlap here). Unlike Kim and Smith’s (2005) work that identified “courage” as an important personal attribute of those who produce quality news visuals, the non-specialist journalists in this sample implicitly mentioned only a single attribute of the photographer, timing, in relation to being able to anticipate and capture “action.” It is worth noting that other personal attributes are also implicitly required, even though journalists didn’t explicitly name them. For example, to be able to appreciate which faces are local ones (and therefore tap into the proximity news value) requires a connection to the community, which isn’t always possible given the high turnover of journalistic staff in the regions (Olsen and Mathisen, 2023).

A second insight concerns the relative importance participants placed on technical proficiency and achieving photography basics such as proper exposure, in-focus images, and images that weren’t blurry. Barring their use in creative applications (e.g., creative control of motion blur through intentionally slow shutter speed as opposed to unwanted blur introduced through camera shake, for example), that participants equated these basics with “quality” speaks to the differing visual literacies between specialists and non-specialists who, according to the literature (e.g., Lough, 2019), place more emphasis on emotion and storytelling rather than technical skills and basics.

A third insight concerns the lack of attention participants paid in their definitions to particular people or subjects, or to the representativeness of the depicted identities within their communities. This lack of attention is telling, considering longstanding critiques of news organisations that tend to omit or stereotypically show identities on the margins, such as Indigenous peoples, queer individuals, those living with disability, and older people (Thomson, et al., 2024). This is especially true for regional areas, which are often more conservative than their urban counterparts, and raises larger questions about the importance of who or what is represented, how representative those depictions are, and the place of these considerations within discussions of journalistic quality (Power, et al., 2014).

Overall, this study offers the following three contributions. First, it provides much-needed perspectives from non-specialist journalists who are increasingly producing visuals in addition to their other journalistic roles and often without formal training or guidance. Second, it synthesises various extant dimensions of quality, such as news values, the emotive resonance potential of images, and their aesthetic properties, while also situating these specifically within the context of the local news environment. Third, it proposes a hierarchical model to demonstrate the relative feasibility of these dimensions and the practical opportunities local journalists have to achieve them.

This model helps draw attention not only to attributes of the image, such as who or what is featured and how, but also to the attributes of the image-maker and broader circumstances surrounding production and presentation. This builds on work done by scholars such as Kim and Smith (2005), Bock et al. (2018), and Thomson (2019), who have tried to elevate scholarly attention beyond the frame of images to also focus on the people in front of and behind the lens and the influence they have on resulting depictions.

Conclusion

The realities of local/regional journalism have marked implications for the types of news visuals that are made, and which are possible. For example, as previously noted, when news visuals in regional areas are made in-house, they’re often created by journalists who make images or videos in addition to a laundry list of other duties, including writing, editing, social media managing, and designing. The lack of specialisation, and the associated lack of formal training that goes with this, coupled with time pressures and the often-spread-out nature of the communities they cover mean that literal photos or videos (e.g., ones of the mayor discussing a local housing crisis, for example, would usually be made and published rather than photos or videos showing the effects of the housing crisis). For these reasons, the “narrative,” or storytelling quality, of an image is at the top of the hierarchy as they are difficult and resource-intensive assets to create. Given the attention local journalists placed on including faces and local faces or settings (drawing implicitly on the personalisation and proximity news values), the news values dimension is a close second in the proposed hierarchy.

A different operating and business environment (a larger news outlet in an urban area, for example) might be able to support more specialisation and investment in visual storytelling that could result in different layers and a different hierarchy of what a “quality” visual is. For example, widespread social or cultural impact ⁴ as understood as the changes that result from a news photograph being published and widely seen might be at the top of the hierarchy for professional photojournalists. Within the local news environment, however, journalists only spoke about impact (through the language of an emotional reaction to seeing an image) at the individual (rather than the collective) level rather than about impact as widespread change resulting from an image being widely seen. Thus, these dimensions of a quality news visual are a product of the perspectives of local journalists and don’t necessarily extend to other types of visual news.

Future studies might explore how these dimensions are similar or dissimilar among different populations and contexts. For example, how would the dimensions change if specialists were interviewed rather than non-specialists or if citizen journalists and audience members were interviewed rather than journalists? Likewise, how specific to news photography are the dimensions? Which dimensions, if any, are transferable to video news or infographics and which are photo-specific? Which of the identified dimensions most strongly affects audience engagement? What is the role of ethics and representativeness in discussions about visual news quality and how should these be accounted for in in the daily sourcing and presentation of local visual news? By attending to these questions and continuing to refine the identified dimensions (or develop variants for different contexts), the scholarly understanding of quality local visual news will be further enhanced and the day-to-day image-making practices of local journalists can be better guided.

Ultimately, as the dynamics of who is making local visual news has shifted from staff photojournalists to freelancers, words-based reporters, or community members, it is logical to assume that understandings of quality will also shift. This article examines this topic from the little-studied perspective of non-specialists and crystallises how they see a quality news visual as well as offers a hierarchical model from the most doable to the most aspirational, recognising that certain forms of quality are more resource-intensive or difficult to achieve than others. Current understandings of quality largely come from specialists at large news organisations in urban contexts and this work provides vitally needed perspectives from those who are non-specialists, working regionally, and serving audiences that have different wants and needs to their urban counterparts. Further research is needed, too, to understand how audiences, who are increasingly supplying local visual news through their contributed imagery, understand quality and how their understandings compare to those of non-specialists and specialists alike. Doing so can allow the news media to remain attentive to audience expectations and ensure they are delivering a product that is perceived as relevant, engaging, and informative, which is critical as local news continues to search for sustainable business models. This applies to all forms of journalism but especially the visual side as visuals are a key gatekeeper of attention and interest into whether someone engages further with a story (Schwalbe et al., 2015). Better understanding what is “quality” local visual news—from the perspectives of staffers as well as community members—can also inform which stories staffers prioritise themselves and how they tell them—and which they have to ignore or are willing to outsource coverage of to community members.