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Demotix acquired by Corbis

Dear All,

Some big news...
Corbis, after investing in us in 2011, is acquiring the whole company to better integrate us into their global news operation. You can read the press release here.

The acquisition represents an enormous step towards our goal of becoming a truly competitive international photojournalism agency. Corbis have been extremely supportive partners over the last 18 months, and the results of our collaboration are plain for all to see: doubling our contributor base, doubling our image and video ingest, and multiplying sales many times over.

The benefits we have seen by our association with Corbis should only increase and deepen with the acquisition.

Corbis is profoundly committed to the practice and business of serious photojournalism and editorial impartiality. They run a highly efficient and successful international sales network (200+ salespeople from the US to Europe to Australia) that has already massively bolstered our own operations. And, as the acquisition of Demotix shows, they are extremely ambitious for the future. I sincerely believe we are in the best of hands.

There will surely be changes while we integrate with Corbis, but the core team will stay the same, as will our commitment to Demotix' values of supporting free speech and covering the under-reported.

The Demotix story is evolving, but we are still only at the very beginning of what we hope will be a long and prosperous journey.

With all my very best, and - as we've always said - hasta la revolucion siempre!

Turi

Comments
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ossieike

Hi Michele, many thanks for the note. The application of credits by clients is an industry wide problem that we will continue to fight. Our terms and conditions request that credits are applied but the reality is that it is sometimes difficult to enforce.

Under the Copyright Design and Patents Act, it is a moral requirement to acknowledge sources of material. However, there isn't as yet any legal obligation for crediting images as yet but where possible we will be looking to work with other agencies to reiterate this requirement.

On another note, to continue general discussion points, start the thread under 'General chat' under community.

michelelapini

I saw that the new owner of Demotix (Corbis) doesn't write the name of the photographer. I sold 4 photos with the new ownership and the photo credit is only "Corbis".

I think this is not good for us (photographer) because we sell photos at low price (the last was around £2) and we don't have neither our name in the photos. Althought it's bad regarding the search of the stolen photos, now we can't search by name, but just searching by image (src-img, etc..).

What the Demotix community think about it? It's possible to change this strategy on photo-credits?

Best

Michele Lapini
Photographer
www.michelelapini.net

EdenPhotos

Congratulations and good luck!
I am not sure about the enhanced global reach - my images no longer seem to reach the Corbis site whereas they previously did (not all of them but selected images). Has there been a change here?
Thanks

Onka

Great news! Or is it?

http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0010/features3_frameset.html

aliepodja

what a great news for contributors! ;*

http://about.me/aliepodja

KyddMiller

Is this a good thing, I certainly hope so ...

The Camera is a tool that enables us to see the light but it will always be blind without our minds and imagination.
People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit.

FB : https://www.facebook.com

RichardM

Great news! This should be good for contributors. I came across this article...
http://digitaljournal.com/article/336895

ezsham

All the best to Demotix Team :-)

Michael-Rushton

This is great news! Enhanced global reach, larger infrastructure, and firmly validates all the hard work Demotix has done over the past several years. As a photographer I look forward to seeing this merger/partnership do some amazing things for global media!

Michael Rushton

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The following tips are based on commonly accepted editorial values adopted by most mainstream media.

Visual journalists operate as trustees of the public. Our primary role is to report visually on the significant events and varied viewpoints in our common world. Our primary goal is the faithful and comprehensive depiction of the subject at hand. As visual journalists, we have the responsibility to document society and to preserve its history through images.

On our Editorial ethics for photojournalists page we have put together a list commonly accepted editorial values adopted by most mainstream media.