As the Senior Supervising Editor of Visuals and Engagement at National Public Radio (NPR), Nicole Werbeck works with photographers and manages photo and video editors as well as the teams handling social media engagement. She began working in her current position in 2017, after spending four years as senior digital photo editor at National Geographic. She had previously worked at NPR as part of the home page team, and has also worked at The Washington Post. She also participates in the Women Photograph mentorship program.

Werbeck talked to PDN about how she finds diverse photographic voices to deliver news and documentary photography to readers on a variety of platforms.

Nicole Werbeck

Senior Supervising Editor

of Visuals and Engagement

National Public Radio

www.npr.org

PDN: I listen to NPR on my radio. Why do you need photos?

NW: We’re a media organization. That means we’re on the radio, but we function on many different platforms. We’re digital. We’re on Apple News, Facebook, Twitter and Flipboard. We need visuals for podcasts. We’re on smart speakers. We have a brand new product for the Alexa and Echo Show, where we’re taking the journalism from our hourly newscast, and putting visuals and video with it.

PDN: What’s the mission for the photography NPR assigns and shares?

NW: We’re trying to bring to our audience a diversity of voices, including new and emerging photographers and photographers from all over the world. We want to give our audience stories that interest them and that they can relate to.

PDN: How much of the photography is assigned, and how much of it is existing work?

NW: We’re probably assigning freelance photographers about 30 to 40 percent [of the time].

We also have the Picture Show. When I came back to NPR [in 2017], I wanted to bring back a photography platform, a space where we could publish great visual storytelling, whether that’s existing work, or work we assign for Picture Show. I’d like to see it grow.

Last month on Picture Show we did something on the Miss Navajo pageants, shot by Caitlin O’Hara. We had a nice feature on Wigstock by Mengwen Cao in October. I love Picture Show because it’s a place where we can feature new voices in photography.

Picture Show is open to anyone on staff to contribute to, if they think there’s great work out there they want to feature.

PDN: Where do you and your team look for new photographic voices?

NW: We’re looking everywhere. We do portfolio reviews, attend workshops and conventions, [consult] Instagram, other photographers and photo editors in the industry. We do a lot of work with Women Photograph and Diversify. They’re often referring new photographers to us.

We also invite visiting photographers to come in, and give them 30 minutes to show one or two projects or present a nice variety of work and talk through their experiences shooting it. This is casual. We can have as few as eight editors and producers, or we’ve had as many as 40.

In August, we asked Tomas Ayuso, who was referred by another photo editor. Members of our global health team came to see Tomas’s presentation and were really excited about it. They ended up publishing his work with the story “It’s Hard to Grow up—and Grow Old—in Honduras.”

We have a lot of newsmakers come into our New York office. Elias Williams has been making portraits for us. He’s photographed James Comey and the Iraqi foreign minister and Lin Manuel Miranda.

One of the things I’ve been doing is working with member stations to integrate their work more. We are trying to provide them with a larger platform on which to show their work. There’s a lot of talent at our member stations.

PDN: I was interested in Jessica Earnshaw’s photos, from the investigative story that ran on All Things Considered, of a female inmate in an Iowa prison that’s changing the way it treats women inmates. The photos appear with a “click for sound” button that lets you hear audio clips of an interview with the subject.

NW: The soundscape tool was created two years ago by an intern. We’ve been using the tool more. I’m finishing a piece with photographer Tyrone Turner that will use that tool. He also recorded his own audio. In March, we had Greg Miller shoot large format on film during the March for Our Lives, and one of our multimedia interns collected the audio for the story.

PDN: What kind of stories do you use it on? When is it appropriate?

NW: That’s something that comes out of an original reporting and photography assignment. Then, there’s a discussion between us, the data visualization team and our radio colleagues to see if this can come together.

PDN: Do you look at pitches from photographers?

NW: I try to respond to as many pitches as I can.

It helps if a photographer has a well crafted pitch, whether that’s a few paragraphs or a few sentences. If they have a couple photographs they can share with it, that’s great. Or, if it’s something they haven’t photographed yet, a written pitch will work.

PDN: Are there particular genres you’re looking for?

NW: We look at documentary work and portraits, but I’d really like to see people try new things and experiment a little bit. I feel like Picture Show is a place we can show that. We are trying to get the bandwidth to do more with Picture Show.

PDN: What other projects have you shown on Picture Show?

NW: Producer Becky Harlan did a story on a DC public housing complex with photographer Joy Sharon Yi. It was a well done photo story with a really nice narrative. I have to say, it’s a place I drive by every night, but her photos showed us many things

I didn’t know.

We had a super fun piece on Afropunk in Johannesburg shot by Melissa Bunni Elian.

We showed Tsering Bista’s self-portraits in a story called “Redefining the Bakhu” [long dress worn by women of the Mustang district of Nepal].

I think that Picture Show offers an opportunity for more serendipity, but we hire photographers because we like the work they’ve done and their style. That’s one thing I always want photographers to remember: They need to be true to themselves.

PDN: Is there anything, besides great imagery, that you need to see from a photographer before you trust them with an assignment?

NW: When you’re on assignment for us, you’re a journalist and we expect you to be a journalist. We expect you to be able to form a visual narrative, to be able to collaborate if you’re working with one of our reporters, and also be able to take some direction.

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