Felix Koltermann (2023): Fotografie im Journalismus. Bildredaktionelle Praktiken in Print- und Online-Medien. [Photography in journalism. Image editorial practices in print and online media.]

Reviewed by Kristina Wied

No text without an image – that is the rule in print and online journalism. Yet although visuals are highly relevant in journalistic reporting, actual editorial practice does not seem to reflect this significance. In his book, Felix Koltermann shines a light on how photography is handled in print and online editorial offices in Germany. He attempts to offer »a generally comprehensible point of access to questions of journalistic visual communication« (16). His success in this is not entirely consistent.

Koltermann – a communication studies expert, journalist and photographer – presents the results of a research project he led as part of the »Visual Journalism and Documentary Photography« degree program at Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts. At the practical heart of the research were interviews and »on-site visits« (16), as well as critiques of newspapers and images, in order to take stock of image editorial practices and reflect on the relationship between photography and journalism.

Koltermann’s study addresses a gap in research up to now. To conduct it, he uses a qualitative, journalism-influenced mix of methods from empirical social research. The results are interesting but, by their very nature, capture only a moment in an extremely dynamic market that is shaped by digitalization and the increasing use of artificial intelligence.

In the first section of the book, Koltermann starts by presenting insightful data on photo and image editors at German newspapers (cf. 19–26). This is followed by the results of a content analysis that examines images from 24 issues of six German national and regional daily newspapers from the year 2019 (cf. 27–33), including in relation to different types of image, their sources and image credits.

The fourth section is made up of transcripts from interviews with 15 people who are or were involved in the process of journalistic image production in one way or another (cf. 34–114). The interviewees include Sabine Pallaske from Mittelstandsgemeinschaft Foto-Marketing, Monika Plhal from the European Press Photo Agency, Marcus Hormes, in 2020 head of a local newspaper editorial office for the Trierischer Volksfreund, and Thomas Geiger, former Chair of the Image Journalism group at the Bayerischer Journalisten-Verband. This gives readers the opportunity to see the attitudes and experiences of these experts for themselves and to draw their own conclusions. But they are left to do so largely alone.

Koltermann follows this with a description of his »on-site visits,« documenting brief reportages on nine editorial offices (e.g., the image editorial office of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung), academies (like the »Basics of image editing« workshop at the Emerge Akademie), and events (such as the European Publishing Congress) (cf. 115–153). His descriptions provide brief insights into the working and training practices of image editors at the time of observation, between February 2020 and May 2022.

In 13 image critiques, Koltermann uses individual articles to address current questions in journalistic image communication (cf. 154–190). These are thoroughly researched, well documented, and comprehensibly analyzed. For example, he illustrates normative errors and failures in image communication and highlights ambiguous or even false contextualization as a result of image selection or the image-text relationship. This provides clear orientation for his readership.

Finally, Koltermann compares front pages from selected print media on six events of national or international significance, including the start of the war on Ukraine in 2022, the results of the German federal election in 2021, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 (cf. 191–216). The analyses are easy to follow, the results insightful. Although the front pages analyzed report on the same event, their interpretations differ – in most cases, contextualization is the deciding factor.

In the appendix (cf. 217–279), Koltermann provides a considerable collection of literature recommendations, systematically arranged by publication type, and an extensive directory of links. This extends from links to service providers on the image market, links to software for editorial offices, and websites for image verification, to a list of internet addresses of associations and institutions that make an outstanding contribution to photo journalism.

In painstaking detail, he has also put together a useful appendix on legal regulations and ethical norms, such as on credits, labeling requirements for manipulated photos, and dealing with digital metadata. A comprehensive glossary rounds off this diligent work.

All in all, the book is multilayered and highly detailed. Koltermann presents numerous pieces of the jigsaw of image editorial practices in print and digital journalism in Germany. However, he frequently fails to link these pieces together and combine them to form a coherent overall picture.

A provocative question to finish: Why was this book published in the first place? Koltermann himself notes (cf. 16) that it is a selection of texts that – with four exceptions – have already been published together on the website www.bildredaktionsforschung.de between 2019 and 2022, and remain freely accessible there.

Given this background, the book can be seen as printed documentation of the completed research project, with the addition of useful information for reference and more detailed examination of the topic – although this is also all available via the aforementioned website.

About the reviewer

Dr. Kristina Wied, Dipl.-Journ., Academic Director at the Institute of Communication Studies at the Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg. Her research interests include journalism research (media content and newsrooms), visual journalism (especially photos and moving images) as well as social media communication.

Translation: Sophie Costella

This review first appeared in rezensionen:kommunikation:medien, 4 April 2025, accessible at: https://www.rkm-journal.de/archives/25405

About the book

Felix Koltermann: Fotografie im Journalismus. Bildredaktionelle Praktiken in Print- und Online-Medien. [Photography in journalism. Image editorial practices in print and online media.] Cologne [Herbert von Halem] 2023, 284 pages, EUR 28