Rethinking the news photo business is not done one picture at a time.

"News photography as a service" is one of my Top 10 Media Innovation Ideas. I'm publishing one media innovation each day during the ten first days of October.

The structural change in the press business environment has hit hard on newspapers, but even harder to press photo companies. Nowadays there is always someone with an authentic, on-the-scene image. The web is full of dirt cheap or free stock photos.

Innovative companies can radically disrupt their business with new ideas. The time for change is now. I'm looking at you, STT Lehtikuva.

Offering photography as a service to end customers means that the magazine or newspaper does not purchase an individual photo - they purchase a service which aims to deliver best possible photo to each reader, individually.

Imagine an article about a football game Manchester United versus Barcelona. Our service would show a different picture to the reader depending on the team the person supports, whenever that data is available. A fan of Wayne Rooney? The press photo company shows you his face, a bit depressed due to the recent loss. You prefer Messi? After this game, you get the happy face.

Offering a service makes it tricky to copy the business assets: data about reader preferences and a wide variety of quality photos. Further, each photography-as-a-service frame on websites can function as a gallery of different, scrollable photos that are curated by professionals.