Gotta Be Superior website misleads visitors with stock images

Wow. Incompetence. I doubt Superior will get their poorly spent money back. Swim is not a new company. Why are local photographers not asked to sell photo rights for the Superior campaign? Does Swim have a poor reputation with local professionals? I see better photos from friends enjoying the local outdoors in WI on Facebook with their smart phone snapshots. 🙄

That’s a lot of dishonesty for just one group. If they paid (peanuts) for these images, then they DO know about it because there are receipts. If they did NOT even pay for them … wow! If this is what they do when they get a 60% funding increase, they need to be gone, IMHO.

I”d like to paraphrase and summarize some of the public comments I’ve made on the Facebook discussions surrounding this story this week. I have no affiliation with Swim, and in fact had never heard of them before this article. The Monitor’s reporting brought them to my attention. To state up front, some of the critique published by the Monitor is fair, but some is not.

Overall, as a person whose very first professional web developement project was for a municipality in 1997, who has worked in the world of digital marketing, interactive software development, web development, marketing, content development, editing and print publishing, knowing what these things really take to create and thrive, I have to stand by my objective, unbiased quick review that I think Swim Creative is providing an overall excellent result for the budgets they have been given. The City of Superior is getting a quality product in exchange for what they are paying for. In other words, to dig in on a relative handful of stock images, vs. the depth of content and the massive scope of this project, is akin to what, maybe 0.1% of the overall project maybe falling short of an expectation? Frankly, I was impressed by what was delivered, and when I went to look at Swim as an agency, saw more impressive work. It looks like a team of veteran professionals who have a solid portfolio of work and seem capable of delivering.

But what, exactly, is the expectation here, particularly in this critique over stock images? Again, some of these are quite valid, and I won’t argue those points as they have some level of merit. But the irony is that some of the ones that people latched onto the most are some of the ones that simply lack any logical support!

Case in point: the opening image, which Ramos has repeatedly harped on as an “unknown beach” that could be anywhere. No, this is a journalistic fail.

The image was easily located at https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beautiful-wisconsin-portion-lake-superior-shoreline-1776316613, titled “Beautiful Wisconsin Portion of the Lake Superior Shoreline”

It is a beach on Lake Superior, along the Wisconsin shoreline, per the photographer who posted it to Shutterstock. Could be Superior. Could be a short walk from the mouth of the Brule River. Could be somwhere by Port Wing. Could be someone’s private shoreline. You and I don’t get to know. Is it an acceptable representation of what the shorelines and beaches are like in the region? ABSOLUTELY.

The tirades over the Lake Baikal blue ice? Well, the subject matter was BLUE ICE. And blue ice can occur anywhere. What does it matter whether the blue ice depicted was photographed here in the region or halfway across the planet? Nothing anywhere stated that the blue ice WAS photographed here in the first place..it was simply a picture of blue ice. It matters not, in the same way that it doesn’t matter that an apple photograph used to depict a honeycrisp for Apple Fest in Bayfield is only “permissible and OK” if it is photographed hanging on a tree in an orchard RIGHT THERE..and not on a branch on a tree downstate or in MIchigan.

So while I strongly support Ramos and the Monitor, on this one the arguments have fallen flat. There is nothing dishonest or deceptive. The poeple invoking things like journalistic ethics fail to understand the fundamental difference between a marketing website promoting tourism and an actual journalistic outlet like the Duluth Monitor. And irony of ironies, as I type this, the leading photo of this article remains captioned as “unknown beach,” while I’ve twice shared the correct information, that was publicly available, hours ago, yet meanwhile, the blue ice post has a bevy of new photos that presumably were shot locally…when I’d argue that in one instance an actual update and correction is actually ethically warranted, whereas the other was unproblematic from the get-go because no deception of any sort was ever stated in the first place.

Irony of ironies, this story probably helped bring about a lot of GOOD. It probably helped Swim with some exposure. It probably helped connect Swim with some new photo resources and collaborative partners for the Superior project. And all the ruckus it created probably really helped the Monitor’s social media engagement numbers.

But this was a swing and a miss for me, Ramos and contributor Mello. Focus more on the important stories, like the ongoing back-door dealings in city halls, county boards, and corporate malfeasance. I’m not getting the stench of rot over at Swim…frankly if I was wanting back into that agency world and live again, from what I saw I’d be sending them a fresh resume and cover letter.

Keep on muckraking!