Every AP photo from New York City goes out from Aaron Jackson's desk. Jackson '88 finds the biggest news stories, assigns the photographers, and decides which photos to put on the wire.

"When I think about the calling of the photojournalism," says Jackson, "I think it's beautiful--to tell the stories of people's lives, to write the first draft of history, as they say. It's exciting to be at the source of information, to feel like you are in the middle of it."

The day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average sank to a five-year low and the indexes were fluctuating wildly, Aaron Jackson's phone kept ringing. "Susan would call me periodically, asking, 'What have you got? When am I going to see the pictures?'" says Jackson, of the supervising editor on the Associated Press's national photo desk. "She was calling me because the editors of the largest newspapers across the country wanted to know what photos would be on the wire for them to use on the next day's front page."

 

Jackson-the person responsible for seeing that AP offers its subscribing U.S. newspapers photographs that beat the competition (Reuters and Agence France Press)-had been checking in with the photographers he had covering the story. By day's end, he would send out more than a dozen images, each good enough to give millions of newspaper readers a visual way of understanding the economic downturn that was threatening the savings of 60 percent of American households. (Photos of important stories like this one make the international wire as well, reaching 1 billion people through 8,500 newspaper, radio, and television outlets in 112 countries.)

All AP photos from New York City that go out throughout the world are sent from Jackson's desk or from the field by photographers he has assigned. Jackson says that the hardest part of his job as photo assignment editor

was learning to trust his intuition when assigning stories or choosing among the images his photographers had brought back. Jackson has been on the 6:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. shift for the past two years of his five years at AP. Although he had spent the previous two years at Rochester Institute of Technology learning both the shooting and business sides of photography, Jackson's editorial judgment was honed on the job. He largely credits a colleague for this.

"She can find exactly the right picture every time, because she edits with her heart-she feels what the right picture is," Jackson says. "I'll often think to myself, 'I don't know if anyone is going to use that photo in their paper, but, hey, it's such a great photo-I've never thought of this building or scene in that way before-so let's put it out there, let's raise the bar on what photography can be,'" he says. "And sure enough, the play reports the next day show it was used around the country." 

Jackson's toughest judgment calls came after Sept. 11 when he was working 16-hour shifts sorting through literally thousands of images to choose the hundreds that went out over the wire every day. The experience helped him define his ethical position on what readers should and should not see. Take the fact that many people were so desperate they leapt from the burning towers. "If we only show pictures that are euphemistic of violence, then people won't understand how important it is that we stop being violent," explains Jackson of AP's decision to run the heart-wrenching images of people falling through the air but not those of bodies after they hit the ground. "If one of the consequences of violence is people jumping 80 floors, we need to show that, but we don't have to show gore for its own sake."

Jackson believes that the way to bring peace to the world is through empathy. And that photojournalists are in a unique position to connect people to one another by showing events in such a way that when looking at the picture, you can imagine how it feels to be there.

For this reason, he believes it's important to continue to take pictures in arenas of ongoing conflict, such as the Middle East.

"Some people think that to photograph another person's suffering is invasive," he says. "But photographs of what's happening to Israelis and Palestinians, for example, show us that these people have jobs and kids, they have many of the same fears and hopes that we have, that they are not so different from us." Jackson knew when he entered RIT that, although he loved taking photographs, his real passion lay in looking at "lots and lots" of them. He also enjoys teaching, managing, and leading groups of people. Being editor was the ideal choice. The first film he edited at the AP was of New York City news conferences, a greater challenge than it first appears. The problem is that news conferences are so dry to shoot, resulting in pictures that are almost exactly the same. But the subtle nuances are what count, Jackson says.

"The only thing different is a gesture in the hand or look in the eye-that's what makes the picture, but often you can't put your finger on exactly why," Jackson explains.

He now supervises eight staff and 20 freelance photographers. There's a lot of trust involved, because at the end of the day, Jackson knows if something important has happened, he must have a picture of it.

And things can happen fast, but not usually as fast as rock star Michael Jackson's appearance last summer. The crowd (and photographer) had waited four hours outside SONY Music headquarters in Manhattan when the superstar cruised by on a double-decker bus, stopping for 45 seconds at most. Nevertheless, the AP photographer got a great shot.

"I try to develop relationships with photographers where they will want to work really hard for me," Jackson says. "To do that, I have to show that I care a lot about them, respect their time, their effort, their work, and their judgment." Acting as a buffer between upper-level editors and photographers, Jackson em-powers his staff to use their "vision" on the job. Each photographer has a certain style, he says, and above all he wants them to be true to that.

"It's beautiful what happens when you get a conversation going as you start looking at their film," he says of the collaboration central to photo editing. "You can watch an idea develop over a series of images as a photographer starts following their own heart, as they sense the story, then suddenly there is the one that just says it!"

Recognizing that such autonomy is critical to getting the best from his staff is an idea Jackson says he learned in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Undergraduate Business Program: that a person has to have an equal measure of responsibility and authority. ("If you have responsibility without authority, you can't get anything done; and authority without responsibility offers immunity from the consequences of your actions," he says.)

His years here were valuable for reasons other than course work. Of lasting influence, he says, is the level of competition he felt from his fellow students.

"When you get out, you realize you are ahead of the curve because you spent four years rubbing shoulders with people who were constantly pushing you," he recalls.

A competitive edge that doesn't push people aside, but instead tries to draw people in, is a skill that he believes has "raised his stock" within AP. And he hopes it will do the same wherever he lands next. At 37, with a firm grasp of the wire service business under his belt, Jackson is getting ready to move out, and up. It's time to learn the industry from the newspaper perspective. And become that voice calling down from upstairs.

- Metta Winter