The plethora of technology now available to communicate different forms of journalism, across a variety of platforms, has allowed journalists more freedom in their storytelling process. This is the driving force behind Me-Mo, a new multimedia magazine created by award-winning freelance photojournalists, Manu Brabo and Fabio Bucciarelli, in partnership with web-developing group, Libre.

(l-r) Matteo Dispenza, Manu Brabo, Fabio Bucciarelli and Paul Lowe

On Tuesday 17 February, Brabo and Bucciarelli, along with Libre president Matteo Dispenza, convened at the Frontline Club to discuss the genesis of Me-Mo and to share their thoughts on the future of visual storytelling. The two photojournalists also presented their work on the Libyan revolution, which is featured in the magazine’s recently released first issue. The event was chaired by Paul Lowe, course director of the Masters Programme in Photojournalism & Documentary Photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

The difficulties faced by freelancers when looking for viable ways to publish their work was a main source of inspiration for the founders of Me-Mo. This was especially evident during the Libyan War in 2011, when Bucciarelli and Brabo both worked as freelance photographers for various major news outlets. After their return from Libya, the two photojournalists continued to work in conflict areas and began to brainstorm and collaborate with other freelance journalists in order to develop the Me-Mo concept.

Brabo emphasised the necessity of collaboration and solidarity amongst freelancers, saying: “We are out there alone. If we don’t have each other, what do we have? We have nothing. In the end, through this sense of humanity and solidarity, you start to create links and you realise you have the same idea as another guy.”

“We are trying to create a space for all these kinds of people, people that we know, who have been working in Syria, in Libya for too long.”

Bucciarelli and Brabo hope that the magazine will become an innovative platform for freelancers who want to maintain creative control over their material in the commercialised world of news journalism. They want their contributors to fully utilise the capabilities of digital technology and to build a dynamic interaction with their subscribers. Bucciarelli said: “What we are trying to do is use the digital way… not only using picture or video, but also 360 pictures, paralysis effect, 360 video, infographics… A new platform for freelancers using the digital way.”

Each issue of Me-Mo will concentrate on a central theme, the first issue focused on fear, and will be published four times a year. A single issue can be bought for €10, and a year-long subscription is priced at €25. On this subject, Dispenza commented: “We decided to work on quality and not quantity.”

An audience member enquired as to whether Me-Mo would accept submissions exclusively from photojournalists, or if they would be open to stories presented through other journalistic mediums. The panelists agreed that high quality content was Me-Mo’s ultimate goal.

Dispenza said, “It’s more about the ideas and not about one kind of media. Me-Mo is really open to every kind of good idea because we are not a big publisher and we are really free to do the best things we can choose together. It’s really about the ideas.”

Watch and listen back to the event below:

Founded by a group of award-winning photographers committed to covering the stories affecting the world around them, and in partnership with Libre, a group of web-passionate developers, Me-Mo is a documentary photography magazine that strives to push the limits of visual storytelling.

Following the release of issue #1, out on digital newsstands from 19 January, Me-Mo co-founders Manu Brabo and Fabio Bucciarelli and Libre president Matteo Dispenza, will be joining us at the Frontline Club to present the project and the inspiration behind it, and to talk about how technology is influencing new medias. Brabo and Bucciarelli will also present their work, featured in issue #1, on the Libyan revolution.

The speakers:

Manu Brabo is a freelance photojournalist whose work has mainly focused on social conflicts worldwide. Since 2007 he has been working on political upheavals, uprisings and wars in countries such as Haiti, Honduras, Kosovo, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Ukraine. Amongst other awards of merit, he is the 2013 Pulitzer prize laureate for his work covering the Syrian civil war for The Associated Press.
Brabo’s featured work in Me-Mo magazine issue #1 is a long-term and personal approach to a subject he has experienced first-hand: imprisonment in a Libyan jail.

Fabio Bucciarelli is a documentary photographer focused on conflicts and the humanitarian consequences of war. He has spent the past few years covering the major events in Africa and the Middle East, notably in Syria, Libya and South Sudan. He has won numerous awards, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal and World Press Photo.
Bucciarelli’s ongoing report on the complexities of covering the Libyan revolution is featured in Me-Mo magazine issue #1.

Matteo Dispenza began his career as a reporter for Italian television; he worked at Televideo Rai and on projects such as a screenplay for Universal Pictures / Cattleya. He then began to work on web design projects and soon founded Libre, a creative digital group based in Turin. He is currently Professor of Innovation and New Media at Istruzione Tecnica Superiore Foundation in Turin, as well as managing the technical aspects of Me-Mo magazine.

Chaired by Paul Lowe, the course director of the Masters Programme in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He is an award-winning photographer, whose work is represented by Panos Pictures, and who has been published in Time, Newsweek, Life, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Observer and The Independent amongst others. He has covered breaking news the world over, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nelson Mandela’s release, famine in Africa, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia and the destruction of Grozny.

ME-MO magazine

Made by freelancers, for freelancers, Me-Mo provides a platform for dedicated stories which might not fit mainstream news outlets. It combines photography, video, text, 3D animation and info-graphics in order to develop and consolidate new ways of storytelling.

Publishing long-term projects and in-depth stories focused on social issues, conflict and humanitarian disasters, Me-Mo is dedicated to creating sustainable photography projects that narrate international histories, whilst also reaching out to the widest audience possible.

Me-Mo magazine will be published quarterly in English, Spanish and Italian.

Photo:
Manu Brabo. Member of FSA opens fire on positions of the Syrian army in the neighbourhood of Salah Hadeen in Aleppo, Syria in March 2013.

Fabio Bucciarelli, AFP. The silhouette of an armed fighter of the Committees for the Protection of the Kurdish People (YPG) is seen as he runs to take position along the frontline in Ras al Ain, near the Turkish border.

Mani, Sean Ryan and Stuart Hughes discuss reporting on Syria

Freelance filmmaker and photojournalist Mani said that there has been a notable change on the ground:

“I started working in Syria in October 2011… Of course there was danger but at the end of the day the people that were around me I could somehow trust them… Now what has evolved is that you don’t know who to trust and the dangers that you’re facing are really much closer than they were before.”

@frontlineclub @stuartdhughes @fabio_buccia #flsyria Mani: "It has become harder to trust/rely on colleagues during risky times"

— Simarght (@simarght) November 19, 2013

Emma Beals, freelance journalist and a member of the founding committee of Frontline Freelance Register (FFR) said that the risk is not just injury now it’s kidnap:

“I think the problem now is even if you trust them when you go in with them some of those groups are now fighting against other groups…they potentially don’t have the power either militarily or politically to overcome the groups that would seek to kidnap you.”

Reporters are being abducted at an unprecedented rate & captors aren't even making demands #FLSyria http://t.co/rDvESgiSoN

— James Denselow (@jamesdenselow) November 19, 2013

Sean Ryan, associate editor of The Sunday Times and formerly foreign editor, said that his position on freelancers has changed since the beginning of the Syrian war, in particular due to his experience with one freelancer. Ryan felt that giving him work had been an incentive for him to take unnecessary risks for a story:

“I probably paid him quite generously for a very good story which was an excellent page lead…and it was only when he offered me the second story from Aleppo that…he was now offering the story expecting to get money from our paper. I felt at that point it was irresponsible to give any freelancer in that position an incentive.”

Another audience member asked if it made a difference to journalist’s safety on the ground whether they were part of a news organisation or freelance?

Mani:

“When you have a media organisation behind you it’s much more clear…you have a discussion with them, there are boundaries. But when you’re really on your own you get excited by all the stories and if you know you want to report on it…you can make more mistakes.”

Beals added:

“It’s an expensive enterprise to go into Syria with the proper equipment and the proper security and proper communications kit and if you’re not getting the backing of the larger organisations then that becomes infinitely more difficult.”

.@nytkeller recently wrote that reporting from Syria increasingly relies on the "replacements" #FLSyria

— James Denselow (@jamesdenselow) November 19, 2013

Beals pointed out, in response to a New York Times article, in which writer and former editor Bill Keller said that news organisations were increasingly reliant on ‘replacements’:

“It’s important to realise that freelancers…want to be freelancers, not because they’re a ‘replacement’… because they want the freedom to cover the stories they want to cover…it’s a choice…an option that they’ve got that they’re embracing.”

Documentary photographer Fabio Bucciarelli agreed:

“I feel fine doing freelancing. . . . A lot of time freelancers have more motivation than staff… a lot of time they [staff] don’t want to go out of the hotel because they’ve already got the money.”

Hughes: “Welcome to my world!”

L-R Mani, Sean Ryan, Stuart Hughes, Emma Beals and Fabio Bucciarelli

“A lot of what we’re doing at the moment is picking on activists, little Skype interviews, verifying the story that you already had cooked up in your head. Which isn’t great, if anyone’s got any ideas? …It’s something we all need to think about, how do we report Syria if we can’t report Syria?”

Bucciarelli said that journalists would need to think of different ways of reporting:

“We can think a bit more about …trying to report from the refugee camps…talk with the Syrian people that already scattered from Syria… If it’s not possible now or it’s too dangerous to now go into Syria we can talk about Syria [with] the people who are escaping from there.”

But what about using citizen journalists and activists on the ground, an audience member asked?

Ryan said categorically:

“It would be unacceptable because they would be at the same risk as a freelancer would be if we sent them in and it would be a risk that we couldn’t quantify.”

Watch the full discussion below