20 Under 40 - 1995 Profile: Gregory A. Mellis

PRESSTIME

By Presstime Magazine

First Published: December 1995

As every photographer knows, composition is key to a good picture. It's just as key to running a photo department, says Greg Mellis, Copley News Service's director of photography.

Mellis has spent the past year revamping photo operations at Copley's five suburban Chicago papers and establishing a state-of-the-art photography network to link all 11 Copley papers in California and Illinois while better serving CNS clients.

Mellis' traditional talent bolsters his credentials for this high-tech venture. Four times, the National Press Photographers Association selected him Regional Photographer of the Year. In 1994, he also won the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Award for Photojournalism for a series on children and inner-city violence produced by The State Journal-Register in Springfield, Ill.

His first love was music, specifically the trumpet, but he balked at pursuing it full time. "Music is introverted. You spend a lot of time working alone," says the Midwesterner. "Photography gives you the chance to be out with people in the community."

Since newspaper managers are typically "word" people, Mellis contends, "the content of photography hasn't been looked at by most newspapers as seriously as text." The result, he says, can be aggravated, frustrated shooters whose independence often is viewed as negative.

To raise photographers' profile, he's developing an electronic archive so Copley pictures can be reused by the group's papers and news-service clients or sold outside. "I'm trying to change our newspapers' visual content—and move technology forward."