Welcome to the January 2009 issue of The Digital Journalist .

I s there any reason I should consider reducing the quality level of Large JPEGs from 10 on my EOS-1D Mark II? I'm surprised the SI Photo Web site recommends a quality level of 6. My newspaper doesn't want RAW files shot, so a maxed-out JPEG quality setting seems to make sense unless I'm missing something.

Think of Madison Avenue. Mad men for real. Imagine all those creative minds at work trying to get inside our heads as they produce advertisements for all media they hope will move us to purchase the products they want us to buy now more than ever in this severely depressed economy. Step back for a moment. Then get in touch with reality, if that is possible.

Does anyone who listens to or who watches television know the difference between news and the faux shows that dominate prime time for MSNBC? Does anyone care but me? The simple answer is, probably not. This is not a good sign for the health of the republic. I know that sounds portentous but the presentation of news is more important than ever and to have MSNBC do what it does five nights a week and pass off its programs as news makes a mockery of what news should be. Simply put, MSNBC has violated my trust in news programming, especially given that its parent is NBC News.

Before we close the book on the old year, we'd like to address a comment posted by photographer Karen Lenz on her blog, because it is a reminder of the fact that, as professionals, what we each do as an individual matters. It matters a lot.

T he Digital Journalist has been maintaining nearly since its inception that the rules were about to change in television news. Ten years ago, television news was an insatiable beast with an unlimited amount of money to spend, as it devoured the news landscape. In those halcyon days, advertisers flocked to network news, and the most profitable television segments of all were local news. Like newspapers, the money just kept rolling in.

The pairing of the song "How Many Christmases" and a slideshow of Chicago Tribune photos from 2008 is meant to jar the senses a bit. The viewer is set for an inspirational ride with Christmas bells, but is suddenly confronted with scenes of despair. Slowly, the images become more positive and the piece ends with a message of hope. The inspiration for this Soundslides piece came when I first heard the song at a Christmas recital at my son's school, where his fourth-grade class sang the chorus. The composer of the song, Jim Papoulis, was a visiting artist at the school, and gave the Tribune permission to use the song.

Having been lucky enough to see an early sample of the new Canon 5D Mark II, I, like others, am only beginning to realize the potential and meaning of this remarkable camera. As the lines between the still and motion world have long been converging, this camera is the single step that may blur the lines beyond recognition.

Before we get on to the "professional" stuff, David Pogue recently wrote in The New York Times about the five tips he considered to be most important to the users of small (not DSLRs) digital cameras. Perhaps it doesn't speak well of us professionals with our big DSLRs, but I think there are a lot of us who would benefit from Mr. Pogue's advice. Check it out at

World Press Photo, Photo District News' Photo Annual, POYi, NPPA's Best of Photojournalism, American Photography 25, White House New Photographers Association' "The Eyes of History 2009," Santa Fe Project/Singular Image Competition, SportsShooter Annual Contest, Magenta Foundation Flash Forward, Art Director's Club Annual Awards – all have deadlines in January and February.

In January we present three dispatches: Klavs Bo Christensen went into Haiti to see firsthand the devastation caused by two tropical storms and two hurricanes. Katharina Hesse was on her way to Cambodia and became one of thousands of travelers caught in the demonstrations at the Bangkok airport, while Paul Taggart reports on the gorilla population and park rangers in Congo's war zone.

After a month in Congo I finally met up with some rangers who were unfortunately living in an IDP site with their families rather than on patrol in the park.

One leader sang slogans while playing his guitar; the masses cheered and waved their flags and yellow plastic hands in support.

"Two tropical storms and two hurricanes hit the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere in the first eight months of 2008."

As visual journalists, photographers and filmmakers are concerned primarily with light. Technical image-making evolved from the revelation that light could somehow be captured and recorded in its variations by a device analogous to the light-gathering capacity of the human eye.

Much has been made of the perils undocumented workers face crossing the southern border of the United States in search of work and a better life. For Central Americans, the U.S. border marks the end of one of the longest, most treacherous migrations on the planet. Still there has been a rise of 50 percent of undocumented Central Americans from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras living in the U.S. since 2000.

This month we have three dispatches by photographers Sean Gallagher, Justin Mott and Tarik Tinazay. In addition, we reprint a first-person account from The Associated Press by Jerome Delay who is a friend of Dispatches and i>The Digital Journalist .

I noticed that landscape photographers are often forced to use a gradient filter to compensate for a bright sky and relatively dark foreground. Why can't this be done digitally in camera? It seems to me that if the camera were told to look for a horizontally placed light/dark line that it could apply some exposure compensation with no need for a filter. In fact, the latest Canon 50D has some exposure compensation so perhaps this could be developed (no pun intended) to simulate a gradient filter.

With all the optimism that now surrounds the war in Iraq, what the military refers to as "success" because of the recent surge, why have we not heard that old saw about Vietnam: "the light at the end of the tunnel"?

It's not as if we woke up one morning and editorial rates had imploded and contracts suddenly turned into one-sided suicide pacts. No, we did it one assignment and one contract at a time. Every time a photographer agreed to a lowball, rights-grabbing contract it became just a bit harder for the next photographer to make a good deal.