Instagram Pages from 46_4_su13_CJET

Instagram
Kevin Systrom (CEO, co-founder)
Kevin (@kevin) graduated from Stanford
University in 2006 with a bachelor’s
degree in management science and
engineering. He experienced his first
taste of the startup world when he was
an intern at Odeo, which later became
Twitter. He spent two years at Google —
the first of which was working on Gmail,
Google Reader and other products.
Later he worked on the corporate
development team.
Mike Krieger (co-founder)
Mike (@mikeyk) also graduated from
Stanford University, where he studied
symbolic systems with a focus on
human-computer interaction. While
pursuing his undergraduate degree, he
interned at Microsoft’s PowerPoint team
and at Foxmarks (now Xmarks) as a
software developer.
Cindy Berry, adviser, Decatur (Texas) High School
We’ve been using Instagram for a couple months now, and I love it. We
post a photo of the day — we try to anyway — with a brief news/feature
caption and photo credit. My editor, Madeline Peña, assigned everyone a day
of the week, overlapping, so we have three assigned each day, and she posts
one, two or three photos.
The student journalists are starting to use it better by shooting photos
off-campus of contests, games and banquets. Some days we struggle to find
anything.
We do not consider Instagram photojournalism at its greatest — rather it
is a means for gaining interest and readership.
Tom Fox, photographer, Dallas Morning News
I got into it because all the cool kids goaded me into it.
I like using it to post those cool, go-between photos that would otherwise
fall through the cracks in daily news gathering. So many times you happen
upon a neat photo. You shoot it, but it ends up in a desktop folder or your
phone photo album — unshared. Now there’s a place for them. Yeah!
Tracy Anne Sena, adviser, Convent of the Sacred Heart High School (San
Francisco)
Following classroom/staff visits this fall by Libby Brittain (branch.com)
and Emily Banks (mashable.com), the staff decided they needed to jump on
the Instagram bandwagon.
One student said, “Why would you want to use Facebook or Twitter when
you can Instagram?” Her point was that a photo was more vivid — and easier
to post — than a Tweet so teens were much more likely to use Instagram.
What is Instagram?
Instagram is a fun and quirky way to
share your life with friends through a
series of pictures. Snap a photo with
your mobile phone, then choose a filter
to transform the image into a memory
to keep around forever. We’re building
Instagram to allow you to experience
moments in your friends’ lives through
pictures as they happen. We imagine a
world more connected through photos.
How much is your app?
It is available for free in the Apple App
Store and Google Play store.
Where does the name come from?
When we were kids we loved playing
around with cameras. We loved how
different types of old cameras marketed
themselves as “instant” — something we
take for granted today. We also felt that
snapshots people were taking were like
telegrams in that they were sent over the
wire to others — so we figured why not
combine the two?
Casey Nichols, CJE, adviser, Rocklin (Calif.) High School
Personally, I’m a novice, but I think of Instagram as a photo blog of my
life and what interests me. The potential to connect, to interact and to engage
is, as with Twitter, almost unlimited. Should you run Instagram images in a
newspaper? Maybe. Sometimes. Or in a magazine as part of modular coverage,
sidebars/secondary packages.
Not only should you use filters, you almost must if you are going to reflect
the times. The “Instagram” feel, which also shows up in many others ways,
reflects “now” in our culture. If you pay close attention, it is being reflected
more and more in popular communications.
Instagram is simply another tool for connecting with your readers. You can
reflect on their lives, engage them and maintain their awareness. Journalism
is no longer a call to dinner where you can count on hungry readers. You
have to be available on the consumers’ schedules, to offer a variety of ways to
engage and, in fact, to “sit down and interact.” Instagram is perfect for that.
It also serves as a tool to let readers in on your process and make them
aware you are working for them all the time. Finally, yearbooks in particular
can use it (along with other social media) to help create this year’s branding,
to tease future content and to expand on print content.
When you do use an image filtered through Instagram, you must reveal
that it has been altered. Anything that is filtered or changed in any way must
be revealed. Period.
Evelyn Lauer, CJE, adviser, Niles West High School (Stokie, Ill.)
I would not advise students to use Instagram in lieu of real cameras and
real photojournalism. If Instagram photos are being used in a publication,
label them as such. We use Instagram as an extension of our main publication
and as a way to market our publication to our readers who are on
Instagram. We used Sports Illustrated and Chicago Tribune instafeeds as models.
We run hashtag contests every week, encouraging students to submit
their own photos, hence encouraging user-generated content. We also take
behind-the-scene photos of the newsroom to show a bit of what happens in
4 | Communication: Journalism Education Today | a publication of the Journalism Education Association Summer 2013