By Jonathan Ballew

Rob Rainey is worried about the future of journalism.

And Rainey is certainly a subject matter expert. Over the last five decades Rainey has worked with just about every legacy media organization — it would be easier to list the places he hasn’t worked because there would be so few.

Rainey might even be the most senior working photojournalist in the country. Starting while still in high school, Rainey has been behind a camera to help report the news for 52 years.

“I feel like a dinosaur,” he said.

When Rainey started, he had a black and white three-lens camera that he jokes “weighed as much as a Volkswagen.” Back then editing was done with “a razor blade, microscope, and scotch tape.”

Rainey used to hop on his bike after school and pedal to the local news station, where he operated a camera for the evening newscast. Since then, his interest in camera work has never wavered. But Rainey doesn’t consider himself a cameraman as much as he considers himself a journalist.

“I’m a journalist first, without a doubt,” he said.

In those early days there was still money in journalism. Jobs were available to anyone with the desire to tell stories to the public. Foreign bureaus were commonplace and getting hired by a news station out of high school was not unheard of.

Today, the landscape is vastly different, and as bad as reporters have it, it’s even worse for cameramen, according to Rainey. There is a trend in the market to either automate or hire freelance camerawork.

The problem with that, said Rainey, is that cameramen should be journalists in the truest fashion.

“Our role is not all that different from reporters,” he said. “The role of a cameraman is to find information, and to capture it.”

If a cameraman has a background in journalism, then they can offer a unique role to both the reporter and producer.

“The (reporter and producer) usually know the story backwards and forwards,” he said. “But the camera crew comes into the story cold without any background usually.”

This allows them to operate as the eyes and ears of the audience. In other words, they are seeing the story for the first time, just as the viewer will be. If the cameraman has a journalistic background they are able to ask questions that the reporter may have overlooked.

“If you are so familiar with the story, you never think to ask the obvious,” he said.

Rainey said that often he would ask a simple and innocuous question, only to have it end up as the cornerstone of the story. He credits his journalistic training in college with helping him to think inquisitively.

Additionally, Rainey says that camera work as it relates to news coverage can be even more difficult than the act of reporting.

“Reporters and producers have the luxury of rewrites and time,” he said. “Cameramen don’t. The decisions we make in real time are the only ones that matter for us.”

When cameramen with significant journalistic backgrounds are terminated, everyone in the newsroom suffers, said Rainey.

Rainey said that he believes the golden age of journalism ended right around the time Laurence Tisch bought CBS in the 1980s. Tisch starting selling off parts and closed down many CBS bureaus. Rainey said Tisch closed the Atlanta bureau because many, including himself, were close to earning retirement benefits. Since then, it has been downhill for journalists — especially cameramen.

“The volume of work is not nearly as great as it once was, and the compensation isn’t as great either,” he said.

Rainey laments the fact that his daughter pursued a career in magazine journalism, only to make the transition to communications and public relations after nearly a decade in the industry. She had dealt with staff cuts and layoffs before, but this time she was asked to be the one making the cuts. Fed up, she moved to a safer and better paying industry. Rainey said it’s the first time in her life that she has had a retirement plan.

“I don’t think journalists have the respect that they once did,” he said. “There is so much anger and animosity, and it’s easy to dump it all on people who are telling you stuff that you don’t want to hear.”

Rainey said that today journalists are expected to act as a one-man band due largely due to budget cuts in newsrooms.

“The bad thing about one-man bands is that you don’t buy albums from a one-man band because they sound awful,” he said.

If there is any hope for journalism, Rainey said to look no further than the White House.

“I think, maybe Donald Trump has been the best gift to journalism in a long time,” he said. “So much of what he has done has been so abnormal and crazy that it has inspired people to look more at newspapers and televisions to find the truth.”

Although Rainey has a bleak outlook when it comes to the future of journalism, his love and passion for the pursuit is a beacon of light that shines through without him realizing it. He said that those who “have to” pursue journalism, should.

“It’s almost like a calling,” he said. “I had to do it. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

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