Independent/Gerik Parmele

Gary Zierke Jr. is placed in to a police car after allegedly leading law enforcement officers on a lengthy chase through Grand Island and Hall and Merrick counties. Several law enforcement personnel responded to the chase including Grand Island Police Officers, Nebraska State Patrol Troopers and Merrick Counties Sheriffs Deputies.

I’m not having a great day today, woke up on the wrong side of the bed. So I thought I would look in to my archive of someone who was having a bad day. I found this picture of Mr. Zierke. If I remember right this fellow was a wanted criminal and had been successfully fleeing police chases for a couple of weeks. At one time he tried to alter his appearance by burning his hair off with a lighter in the bathroom of a gas station.

I was sitting in the office when I heard a call of a chase starting and the responding officer believing it was Zierke. I remember grabbing my scanner and trying to follow along.

One good thing about Nebraska is it’s flat and roads are laid out about every mile running north and south, and east and west. So it was easy to drive parallel to the chase with out being in the way. I drove along making sure the chase was happening a little ahead and to the north of me while driving along Highway 30 in Merrick County.

After awhile I heard that this fellow had driven his car off in to a bean field. That’s when I knew to bust a move up to the scene.

When I got their they were walking him to a police cruiser. As I was shooting I noticed he didn’t seem to be feeling well. I remember he said he was going to be sick. Then something that I thought was extraordinary happened. A police officer helped him out and held him. I remember seeing a lot of compassion in the officer so I thought it would make a good picture. He was patting his back and had a look of general concern on his face. I thought it said a lot about an officer of the law who just captured a guy that had given so many other cops a lot of trouble.

As I began to shoot a State Patrol officer, who thought I was trying to get a picture of the suspect throwing up (which he never did), stepped in front of my camera and yelled at me, “You sick son-of-a-*****!”

Needless to say I didn’t get the picture I wanted.

NOTE: If you missed my previous post I’m revisiting my work from 10 years ago.

As the photo editor and director of a department of staff photojournalists I don’t always shoot the best assignments. My opportunities to photograph something visual are often limited. This can really put me in a funk. The problem really isn’t non-visual assignments but what I make of them. So my goal is to work assignments harder and hold my self accountable. Which means I need to start posting more of my daily work, even if it’s not the best. But don’t worry I won’t post the real stinkers.

It started at 5:30 a.m.

And ended at 1:30 a.m. the next day.

The other day I was reading a discussion on a popular forum for photographers about Twitter, the micro blogging tool that’s becoming ever more popular. The basic consensus from these photographers was “I don’t get it.”

I use Twitter, however it’s pretty easy to say that not every one gets it. And those that do understand what it’s about have thousands of reasons why they use it. I myself have more than one reason to use Twitter besides the obvious reason; that I’m a geek.

One of the reasons I use it is for crowd-sourcing things that correspond with my job. Here’s an example.

We had an incident a while back where I had to quickly choose an image for the paper. Then I spent a little time putting the rest of the pictures together for a slide show.

After everything was published I had someone question why I chose one photo over another. I sent this person a detailed email stating my thought process and that was the end of it. But later it occurred to me that it would be interesting to find out what a variety of other people thought.

So I posted the question to my twitter feed. It was quite interesting to see the responses I got back. Not only did other photographers and photo editors chime in with their thoughts. I received compelling answers back from local readers too.

Click though the slide show below to see my question, the pictures and some of the answers.

This little exercise really brought home the potential benefits being involved in social networking such as this. It allows me to connect with people in my profession and with local readers. It allows them to feel in touch with me, and what I do.

Don’t take my word for it though.

Why journalists should use Twitter

Don’t Fear Twitter

Why journalists (and others) should use Twitter

I watched this video of Malcolm Gladwell twice this morning. I found it very interesting to take what he was saying and applying it to newspaper journalism.

Lots of things stood out for me. Like, people don’t know what they want and even if they did know they wouldn’t be able to explain it. And it’s useless trying to please everyone one way, universally, but more affective to please clusters of people.

I always thought that it would be a good thing to allow every person to customize their news. But I also thought that would be bad because people would miss out on important issues. After watching this I think that clustering content and serving it to readers might be a better way.

His final statement also hits home.

That is the final, and I think most beautiful lesson, of Howard Moskowitz. That in embracing the diversity of human beings, we will find a surer way to true happiness.

So instead of the newspaper industry looking for the perfect way to get people the news I wonder if they should look at how to cluster groups of readers together and finding they best way to serve their wants and needs in the best way. In some ways I think newspapers do this, but they don’t do a great job at it.