Interview: A Pulitzer Prize Winner’s Advice to Young Journalists

“Photojournalism—and photography in general—is based on a trusting relationship: the relationship between the photographer and the subject. And, in order to really get several layers deep, the photographer needs to reveal their sensitive side.”

Matt Rainey is an award-winning photographer from Clinton, New Jersey, who spent much of his career with Newark’s The Star-Ledger. He received the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography in 2001 for his After the Fire series, which depicted the road to recovery for two Seton Hall students who were burned in a dormitory fire. He was also a member of the team that received the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting for covering the resignation of New Jersey’s Governor Jim McGreevey. He joins Merion West’s Erich Prince one year after their first conversation to discuss the current financial state of journalism, his thoughts on the industry, and, most importantly, what he would tell young people considering a career in photojournalism.

Mr. Rainey, really happy to have you back. When we spoke last June, you discussed that The Star-Ledger, your former employer, had 34 staff photographers in 1995, and now there are something like five. I’m wondering if you could speak a bit about how these staffing cuts and layoffs have affected photojournalism?

Photojournalism has been significantly affected. There are far more photographers in the marketplace now that are not doing journalism that were doing journalism as a full time job [in the past]. There is also, I would argue, a diminishing pool of work that’s available for these photographers. In many instances, the pricing of photography has changed dramatically because there are so many more photographers in the marketplace, and there’s significantly less work available. So, the prices have gone down. Furthermore, photographers that primarily shoot journalism are on the lower end of the income scale for photography. And photographers that work in journalism don’t necessarily have the skills to properly price a more commercial-oriented shoot. So this means that they are making less money, and the market is making less money.