Abstract
The purpose of this case study was to explore how decisions were made about photo selection and to determine news professionals' influence over this process. The findings reveal that the social construction of news photos is a collaborative process, but by and large, most decisions about which photographs are published in newspapers occur with photo editors. Photo editors are the "visual elite" because they, more than news editors, have a visual sense that weighs the aesthetic value of a photo with the expression of ideas displayed in a news photo.