In a time of downward pricing for news images UK based editorial photo agency Click News & Media has been holding fast …researching, shooting and delivering great image-led stories which sell at the correct price.
This week they celebrate their fifth birthday (CONGRATULATIONS! .. and PAN look’s forward to the lunch do…) Danny Hayward, Click’s Managing Partner, sent us this positive report citing ‘old fashioned boots-on-the-ground journalism’ as a major factor in their continued success:
“IF there had been a five year plan when Click launched this very week back in 2019, not even the unwaveringly confident founders would have predicted the mark their fledgling new venture could come to make on the media landscape.
Fast forward to 2024 and the agency regularly dominates the news agenda, breaking countless exclusive scoops and leading the way on well-sourced stories, images and accurate information that Fleet Street and beyond regularly clamour to secure.
In a turbulent marketplace where even the biggest players increasingly struggle against the tide of declining circulations and diminished resources, Click News and Media prove time and again that old fashioned boots-on-the-ground journalism, a bursting contacts book and a relentless determination to simply make news happen can still buck the trend.
And while a new breed of pile-it-high and sell-it-cheap digital journalism may bill itself as the future of our industry, Click’s small team of top level operators have proven the appetite for genuine revelation and quality content is as ferociously insatiable as ever before – and in increasingly short supply.
In this anniversary week alone, Click’s team secured the only images of BBC1 star Jay Blades as he secretly left a court hearing charged with coercive and controlling behaviour, the first exclusive pictures of Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher as he returned to the UK amid furore over the band’s reunion, front page scoops about the ongoing scandal behind the scenes at Strictly Come Dancing and a raft of exclusive snaps of the forthcoming Gavin and Stacey finale, to name just a few.
Little wonder Fleet’s Street’s biggest titles have been buying up the content with gusto.
But the agency’s success is much more than a commercial triumph for the Click team – it sounds a uniquely reassuring cheer for newsgathering and popular journalism itself.
Against a backdrop of cost cutting, spearheaded by a raft of new media executives charged only with trimming overheads and all too eager for the trumpeter to sound The Last Post and consign showbiz scoops to the history books, Click prove that the old adage remains true.
If you build it, they will come.
So here’s to the next five years of building, and a huge and heartfelt Thank You to those hardy souls left within our industry who have supported us along the way and share our steadfast belief that the very best of journalism is still worth fighting for every single day, however bumpy the ride.
Viva La Revolution!”
• Related on PAN: March 2024 Industry People: The Sun’s former Executive Showbiz Editor Simon Boyle joins Click News and Pictures