About the Site

The BAGnewsNotes weblog, which began in June 2003, is the successor to the cartoon site (and teaching tool/visual experiment/civics lesson) known as BAGnews.com, which went on-line in 1999.

This blog has four goals:

1.) To analyze news and advocacy images for the way they reveal media bias; political or cultural stereotypes; larger political strategies and dynamics; psychological character; and news not readily obvious in the "textual media."

From a more partisan point of view, the intent is to also analyze images and framing for an underlying conservative or commercial agenda.

2.) To encourage and train people to become better "readers" and consumers of visual news, advertising and advocacy images, and political propaganda (of all stripes).

3.) To grow a community and foster on-line discussion around the understanding and interpretation of news and political images.  BAGnewsNotes is not a lecture so much as a seminar with all participants contibuting, sharing and deepening their knowledge.

4.) To provide a platform for thoughtful and impassioned social photography and political photojournalism.

Photographers and photojournalists represent a tremendous, and a tremendously underutilized source of reporting, awareness and insight about social needs and ills.

Through the conduit of this blog and the blogosphere, my aim is to provide a much more direct; far larger; less rarified; more expedient; and profoundly less commercialized or compromised channel between the visual and written narrative of the photographer on one end, and the concerned audience on the other.