When attempting to view the latest photos from my contacts earlier today, I was instead greeted with this screen, which informed me that the time had come, at last, to merge my flickr account with a yahoo account.

While I had been expecting this for some months now, it still came as a surprise to see this rather than my usual flickr homepage. However, instead of crying about the plight of “old skool” users, I would like to extol the positive effects that flickr has had for the photojournalism program at San Jose State.

Three or four semesters ago, our student NPPA chapter established a group on flickr. At the time, we had perhaps eight members. Currently we have 53 members, some of which are SJSU students, but also include graduates and students from other neighboring schools.

Through the flickr group, we have been able to share and critique work amongst ourselves, bring in educators not local to the Bay Area to participate in guest critiques, inform our members of upcoming contests and events, and also hold our own photo competitions (our daily alphabet hunt just ended).

After seeing how useful the flickr group has been in motivating students and keeping them informed, I decided to create a flickr group that I hope can bring together photojournalism students from across the country. I am hoping that it can help form a community that is dedicated to student photojournalists in particular, keeping them up to date on upcoming scholarships and workshops, offering them a place to receive critiques from their peers, pointing them to the latest and greatest multimedia presentations, providing a place where NPPA members can share their stories for what events work and don’t work, and just becoming a forum where ideas can be shared.

I just created the group as I was writing this post, so obviously there isn’t much there yet, but if you are a photojournalism student, or know some, join the group and add to the discussion.