Open AccessMalcolm Ross, journalist and photographer: The perfect war correspondent?
Author(s) -
Alan Cocker
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
pacific journalism review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 2324-2035
pISSN - 1023-9499
DOI - 10.24135/pjr.v22i1.39
Subject(s) - journalism , photojournalism , photography , subject (documents) , publishing , media studies , ideal (ethics) , spanish civil war , world war ii , art history , history , first world war , visual arts , sociology , art , law , political science , library science , humanities , computer science
Malcolm Ross was New Zealand’s first official war correspondentand from 1915 until the end of the First World War he provided copy to theNew Zealand press. His journalism has been the subject of recent academicinvestigation, but Ross had another string to his bow—he was an enthusiasticphotographer with the skill to develop his own film ‘in the field’. Itmight therefore be expected that Ross was the ideal war correspondent, anindividual who could not only write the stories, but also potentially illustratethem with photography from the battlefields. Yet by the end of the conflicthis body of photographs was largely unpublished and unrecognised. Thisarticle looks at Ross’s photography and, in an era when media organisationsincreasingly require journalists to be multi-media skilled, asks whether therole of the writer and image-taker are still two different and not necessarilycomplementary skills.