Following up on this earlier post, here’s On The Media reporting on ‘Ruin Porn’ (btw, that’s not photographs of naked women in abandoned buildings - the supposed appeal of which escapes me, but that’s another topic). Jerry Redfern, a photojournalist, sent this to me, pointing out the major shortcoming of On The Media’s report: They make it sound as if photographers are sent to Detroit with unlimited budgets and the general instruction to take photos of whatever they want (my way of phrasing this, not Jerry’s). Obviously, that’s not the case. Of course, there are photographers who go to Detroit just because it’s something they want to do, but the photography you see in, for example, Time Magazine was done for that magazine, to illustrate some story. So making it sound as if ‘Ruin Porn’ was just the photographers’ fault really doesn’t cut it: In the world of Time et al. ‘Ruin Porn’ might just be a symptom of larger problems in the world of journalism.