toolkit-editors2.jpg
 
 
 
 

While much of the Photo Bill of Rights and supplementary material was written from the perspective of independent lens-based workers, this toolkit was written based on the experiences of visual editors. We ask visual editors to hold each other — and our respective organizations — accountable in service of building a more equitable industry. 

This document is intended to be a starting point for reflection and conversation; we’d like to expand on it. If you are an editor who would like to contribute to building out this toolkit, please email hello@photobillofrights.com with the subject line “Visual Editors Toolkit.”

 
 

Visual editors play an important role in the implementation of the Photo Bill of Rights. As hiring parties, we should recognize our relative power to affect positive change in the visual media industry through our interactions with independent contributors and within our individual organizations. Our role is twofold: to advocate for strong visual media with our colleagues at our organizations and to uphold the rights of the independent workers we depend on to do that work.

The Photo Bill of Rights lists various specific action items that visual editors and other hiring parties could keep in mind as we collaborate with other lens-based workers. This work requires us to rethink how we approach our jobs as individuals, as well as rethinking how our organizations should operate. Consider it a step in building new habits that will allow us to consider diversity, safety, equity, and parity as a natural part of our hiring processes.

This work should not be done only in response to moments of public pressure. It should not end with hiring Black photographers to cover protests around violence against Black communities. Insider and outsider perspectives both play an important role in balanced storytelling. No worker should be made to feel that they are being hired only to cover stories based on their identity. We must recognize that BIPOC and contributors from other marginalized groups are capable of producing a breadth of work. 

A first step in creating more equitable hiring habits is to take stock of the choices you’re making now. Work within your organization to create a framework for analyzing current hiring practices for independent contributors and identifying gaps. Diversifying your hiring roster should become ingrained in your workflow if it isn’t already. Prioritize regular assessments to help devise additional inclusivity-centered hiring strategies. While tracking your hiring practices can be a complex process, understanding your patterns and establishing a baseline provides a way to challenge your preconceptions. 

This process will look different in every organization; we encourage you to outline your goals, define what success would look like for you, and create a process that takes into account your institutional needs. If you’re interested in a template to use as a starting point, New York Times photo editor Brent Lewis created one that you can modify to track your own hiring practices. If you are interested in seeing a sample of what tracking this type of data can show, please spend some time with Women Photograph’s data collection projects. 

The following are some guiding questions and prompts for visual editors and hiring parties to consider in interactions with independent and staff colleagues. This is by no means comprehensive; the intent is to offer guidance for self-reflection as a first step toward enacting change.

 
 
 

PROMPTS FOR
WORKING WITH INDEPENDENT CONTRIBUTORS

  • Educate yourself and question your own comfort.

    • Are you hiring the same people over and over again?

    • Do you tend to hire white photographers for a range of work while only hiring non-white photographers for identity-specific work?

    • Are you using cumbersome processes as an excuse to avoid expanding your roster?

    • Does it feel too difficult to find new talent that reflects the communities you cover?

    • Take stock of your perceived roadblocks to hiring and consider whether they are actually what’s hindering your long term growth.

  • Familiarize yourself with the contracts you provide contributors.

    • Do you fully understand the terms you’re offering?

    • If you were asked to sign it, would you?

    • Identify predatory language and work internally to change it. This might mean working with internal legal teams or senior leadership to address what terms are actually necessary for the organization and identifying whether your pay rates reflect the rights granted.

  • Build relationships.

    • When was the last time you talked at length with an independent contributor about the work they care about and the work you care about?

    • How often do you work to demystify the inner workings of your organization?

    • This can happen in many spaces, whether it's spending time to do portfolio reviews, creating space for 1:1 meetings with contributors, or simply taking the extra time to talk through expectations with a contributor before the start of an assignment. A strong working relationship is built on trust — you need to earn the trust of independent contributors to the same degree you expect them to earn yours.

  • Recognize that independent contributors may be working for several publications; don’t expect them to track the minutiae of your internal bureaucracy. Be clear and consistent about deadlines, requirements for IPTC and file sizes, and aspects of your organization’s internal systems. Not all workers feel comfortable asking questions about processes because they fear they’ll be perceived as less skilled and lose future work. Anticipate and allow for questions, especially when working with early-career or new contributors and be open and honest with your answers. 

  • Recognize your relative power.

    • Use your personal platforms to acknowledge and amplify the contributors who work with you.

    • Be generous in recommending contributors to peers at other organizations.

    • Do you find yourself recommending or supporting freelancers who primarily share a similar background as you or who look like you?

    • Whose voice and perspective needs amplifying?

    • How regularly do you share or promote the work of contributors who are well-established versus those who are less obvious? 

  • Part of your responsibility as a visual editor is to set contributors up for success.

    • Are you providing opportunity to lens-based workers but not access?

    • Are you empowering that person to do their best work — whether it’s sending visual reference/guidance or confirming consent with sources?

    • Are you providing context, contacts, and other relevant information before a contributor begins an assignment?

    • As assigning editors, we should be advocates for the work of the contributors we collaborate with, especially in our own newsrooms and in spaces where they aren’t present to advocate for themselves.

    • Are you defending the value of the completed work in newsroom meetings?

    • Are you working with writers and editors in your newsroom to educate them on how to work thoughtfully and responsibly with lens-based workers in the field? 

  • Be open to different experiences and perspectives. Acknowledge the gaps in your knowledge and also in the coverage of your organization.

    • Have you created space for contributors to critique or question the framing of an assignment, especially when it challenges your implicit biases?

    • Are you inadvertently complicit in relegating certain narratives to the margin while centering other narratives disproportionately?

    • How can a story benefit based on who I commission to tell it? Often as assigning editors, we are working quickly to facilitate telling stories from perspectives that we don’t have personal experience with; contributors are our eyes on the ground.

    • Are you open to hearing that a story may not be what you hoped or expected?

    • Are you open to collaborating with contributors to adjust those expectations?

 
 

PROMPTS FOR
INTERNAL DISCUSSIONS AT YOUR OWN ORGANIZATION

  • Be an active voice for diversity within your organization, engage in conversations around internal hiring processes, and hold the institutions you work for accountable. Despite the groundwork laid by previous generations to build equity within our industry, too often workers from underrepresented groups are tokenized and pigeonholed. It is easy to unintentionally reinforce stereotypes and tropes when groups are homogenous and share the same implicit biases.

    • How many of your colleagues are Black, Indigenous, and people of color? How many are working class? Women? People with disabilities? LGBTQIA?

    • While we can never fully eliminate individual bias, diverse teams can illuminate blind spots in one another — which is why it’s imperative to work toward more equitable hiring practices from the top down.

    • Is your organization’s leadership representative of the community it covers?

    • Is your organization hiring or promoting candidates from underrepresented groups into leadership positions?

    • Pay attention to the staff hiring practices in your organization and look inward with the same tenacity you should apply to contributor hiring practices. 

  • Educate your colleagues.

    • Do you feel like your organization lacks the language to dismantle systemic racism internally?

    • Are you or your colleagues having the same conversations about representation with each new story?

    • Advocate for comprehensive training in your workplace that includes but is not limited to: education on race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, neurodiversity, disability, and bias. 

  • Do not relegate the work of diversifying your organization to your BIPOC colleagues or colleagues from other underrepresented groups; this should be everyone’s responsibility.

    • Who in your organization usually has to speak out about issues of discrimination?

    • Who suffers reprisals for speaking out?

    • Can you leverage your relative privilege to support them publicly?

    • Are you individually working to share job opportunities with diverse candidates, potentially outside your personal circles? 

  • Be an ally. Recognize the ways in which your own organization treats staff — particularly those from underrepresented groups. Understand that your personal experience may be different while making space to acknowledge the experiences of others. Offer your support in tangible ways, whether it’s publicly calling out transgressions and microaggressions, ensuring credit for work or ideas is accurately noted, or stepping back to allow the centering of someone else’s voice.

  • Be an active voice for pay equity within your organization.

    • Do you suspect your colleagues may be paid lower wages than you despite doing comparable work?

    • How often does your department or organization give merit raises to employees?

    • Have you willingly disclosed your own salary to your colleagues or peers in the industry?

    • Recognize that many organizations don’t set salaries on merit alone — consider working with your colleagues and managers to create transparent pay structures that show fees and salaries across the board. Salary transparency can be a powerful tool for working toward eliminating pay disparities.

 

This should be just the beginning of the work we do to build lasting relationships with independent contributors and colleagues in our organizations. With that in mind, here’s a sampling of additional resources for folks who are interested in building on these prompts:

 


A STARTER KIT OF DATABASES:

 

A STARTER KIT OF FURTHER READING: