Amazon’s decision to shutter (absolutely no pun intended) photography site DPReview demonstrates why I recommend that creators own their content whenever possible. Speaking from personal experience, I bleed for the hardworking editors, reviewers, and writers (among other staffers) whose body of work may soon be whisked away.
Seven years ago, I discovered that during a publishing system upgrade, CNET expunged my byline from my thousands of stories written for the site. In a separate incident, the analyst firm I had worked for merged with another and all my online musings vanished. What I consider to be the most valuable, posted to the Apple Watch and Microsoft Watch blogs between 2006-09, disappeared from the web in 2010. You wouldn’t know I had written anything professionally online for the 10 years 1999-2009. All was deleted when publishers decided to scrub the sites (or in the case of CNET modernize).
But what’s happening at DPReview is far more egregious. GM Scott Everett explains in “DPReview.com to close”, posted today: “The site will be locked, with no further updates made after April 10th 2023. The site will be available in read-only mode for a limited period afterwards”. Then, poof! Twenty-four years of content, which includes community posts as well as reviews, disappears.
Reviews fall into the category publishers call evergreen. Reader (or listener/viewer) interest isn’t fixed to something etched in time. Sure, interest in cameras, lenses, or gear will be greatest following their release. But people resell this stuff, which makes community interaction and professional reviews valuable to anyone for years.
Surely an organization as large as Amazon, and one that sells web commerce and hosting services to businesses across the globe, could find a way to preserve DPReview and monetize its evergreen content. Or has someone in Seattle ditched Starbucks lattes for Apple Kool-Aid—buying into the foolish notion that iPhone is all the camera anyone needs. So who needs reviews?
The recent resurgence in film photography is reason enough to see a future for sites like DPReview. And if vinyl records can outsell CDs (units, 2022, according to RIAA), film’s comeback—and recent nostalgia trend favoring older digital cameras—gives cause to preserve existing content and expand it.
Let’s not ignore the potential value of people buying cameras and equipment. A reasonably good system is a substantial capital investment—and as more, ah, regular folks produce content for Instagram, OnlyFans, TikTok, YouTube, and other apps or services, more will be spent on professional photo and video cameras and equipment. Say, isn’t Amazon in the business of selling things? And the brainiacs can’t find a way to monetize people reading reviews about costly gear that they want to buy? Seriously?
I am a long-time reader (and YouTube watcher) of DPReview content. But those days are over, or soon will be. How unnecessary.
The Featured Image comes from Fujifilm X-T1 on Feb. 28, 2017. Vitals, aperture manually set: f/2.8, ISO 640, 1/60 sec, 18mm; 4:29 p.m. PST.