NPPA Elects New Leadership, Urges Members to Renew Support

The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) held a special board meeting this week where it addressed the organization’s underperforming fiscal position and elected a new president.

Earlier this week, the NPPA revealed that it had laid off a significant number of its staff and asked its two lawyers to work pro bono while it attempted to work through fiscal shortfalls. The laying off of the three staff members — the executive director, magazine editor, and one other office staff member — came suddenly. While the note on the NPPA’s website states the nature of the situation, last week’s emergency board meeting was apparently tense, as several board members and an editor resigned in protest, sources close to the matter tell PetaPixel.

The board scheduled a special board meeting — referred to as “emergency” earlier this week — for yesterday, Wednesday, July 9. It was attended by 120 members. The NPPA has only released comments about the situation via public blog posts on its website. Today, it added another explaining the state of the organization after Wednesday’s special board meeting. There, it reveals that Danielle Gatewood-Gill, the former president of the NPPA, had resigned, and Oliver Janney was elected to the position.

Janney is a senior manager of the Image+Sound Field Production Department at CNN and had served on the executive committee in the past as vice president.

“It has been an honor and a privilege to serve as President of this extraordinary organization. And I remain deeply committed to fighting for our mission and our community,” Gatewood-Gill says in an endorsement of Janney.

“I am here, willing to take on this leadership work, to relentlessly pursue the future viability, relevance and efficacy of the NPPA for the future because the work of this organization has never been more crucial to our craft, our industry, the public good or to democracy as an institution,” Janny says.

“We must transform the culture of the NPPA. We must exercise a much higher level of transparency and responsiveness of the NPPA to address the needs and concerns of our members going forward. I intend to lead, at a minimum cadence, quarterly town hall meetings on Zoom open to all members. This will be a forum for the members to be heard by the leadership of this organization.”

Janny adds that if any member contacts the NPPA board and states that they would like to be a candidate for the president, he would resign at the July 27 board meeting and return as a candidate “to ensure an open process.”

The purpose of the July 9 meeting was to explain and discuss the current financial situation at the NPPA. The layoffs of the staff were in response to the board looking at the finances and determining that it did not have confidence it could meet payroll. However, that changed.

“Treasurer Jessica Velasquez also presented information regarding the current financial status of the association and the income and expenditure totals for the first half of 2025. When a recently-awarded restricted grant was backed out of the totals, the association shows a negative cash balance before other financial obligations are factored into the profit and loss statement,” the NPPA says.

“The original intent of the meeting was to answer questions from the membership and explain the current fiscal situation, but the additional resignations from the board created an issue where the board needed to move to elect a new president to allow the association to function within its bylaws. The board is currently looking into hosting a town hall prior to the summer board meeting to answer member questions.”

Both of the NPPA’s lawyers, Mickey Osterreicher and Alicia Calzada, are still working pro bono for the organization while it figures out its financial situation.

“The summer board meeting is scheduled for Sunday, July 27, at 11 a.m. EDT, and the agenda for that meeting will be posted by July 21. At that meeting, there will be another election for president if other candidates come forward. There will also be an election for the role of vice president, as Matt McCabe stepped down last week. The board will fill two directors’ open seats, as well,” the NPPA concludes.

Photographers should bear in mind that the NPPA has been pivotal in advocating for photographers for many years. It was active in protecting journalists during the COVID-19 pandemic, challenged a law in Arizona that restricted photographers’ ability to record police, and reached a historic settlement with the NYPD after multiple photojournalists were assaulted and arrested by police — this is just to name a few.