His comments were critical about the lack of teamwork & collaboration, as well as a narrower set of skills. For a journalist to be talented in video, they have to be mindful of the text, the image & the sound. Both you & Akagi seem to agree that newspapers have reporters that are focused on the text & photojournalists that are focused on the image. If the single journalist (or team of journalists) is not telling the story with all three of these elements, they’re not a good storyteller in the medium of video.

(If you don’t want to further the stereotype you talk about, you would do well to realize that if photojournalists are part of the culture & the culture is the problem, then photojournalists are part of the problem.)

His comment is a false stereotype about photojournalism. Video and still are two different mediums that require a different approach at times, but that does not mean that still photographers struggle to be storytellers in their craft. Just consider the countless still photojournalists who have mastered the narrative photo story—Scott Strazzante, Kevin German, Jamie Francis, Lisa Krantz, Ross Taylor, Brian Peterson, to name a handful. Their photos are beautiful, lyrical, engaging, and yes, storytelling. More importantly, their images are unobtrusive and respectful of the subject, thus allowing the people to tell their stories without the willful intrusion of a journalist being the center point.

It is true that writers and photographers do not always collaborate, which is an unfortunate reality of the newspaper culture that can be very limiting for photojournalists as a whole. That though, is a problem with the culture, not still photojournalists. It is also true that some still photojournalists have struggled to switch to video. However, Akagi’s comment reflects a parochial view of the wider spectrum. If that is indeed his view, he would do well to study still photojournalism as a craft to better understand it. Perhaps then, that stereotype will not be made.