#Picoftheday

HMS Ocean in the Thames (Pic Eddie Mulholland of the Daily Telegraph)

For a while now I've been doing #tomorrowspaperstoday on twitter with the World At One editor Nick Sutton (@suttonnick). It's Nick's free form and highly informal paper review which happens on twitter as the pdf's arrive in our email in-boxes from national newsdesks. People chime in with comment, and it's surprisingly popular given that newspapers are supposed to be 'yesterday's media'.


Photojournalism is such a vital branch of the art of newspaper production, and yet it's so often overlooked. Harold Evans's excellent book on the subject 'Pictures on a Page' turned me on to it - get hold of a copy if you're interested in why and how great news pictures work in a paper.

Anyway twitter seems a good way to celebrate the work of picture desks, so from Monday we're launching #picoftheday as an informal little photo competition on twitter.

The rules are as follows.

- The picture must be appearing in the paper edition of a paper.

- Any picture desk may nominate a snap, which may be sent to Nick or myself as a pdf of the page it will appear in the paper, our e-mail addresses to be available on request. But other un-nominated pictures may also be considered if we see them in time.

- Nick or I  will decide around 11 which has won and tweet it as #picoftheday - part of the #tomorrowspaperstoday tweets. If we know the snapper they will get a namecheck along with a plug for the paper in which it is appearing.

- Our decision is not final. Coercion or other entreaties will be taken into account.

- Correspondence about our decision will be entered into on twitter, possibly, until bedtime.