The greatest cost, namely time.
Word, image, and sound all must have primacy in the development of the narrative.
Many who are making cellphone images are advocates with a stake in the outcome of what they are depicting. In some ways this makes their work more honest and easier to read - they can also manipulate, although the work of professionals can be quite manipulative as well.
Photographs need to demand the viewer's attention, often implicitly, posing questions as to the nature of what is being depicted. Photographs are not there to show us the world, but to show us a version of what may be happening.
One cannot always summarize massive issues by looking at the life of one person or one family, or even one community.
Photojournalism has become a hybrid enterprise of amateurs and professionals, along with surveillance cameras, Google Street Views, and other sources. What is underrepresented are those "metaphotographers" who can make sense of the billions of images being made and can provide context and authenticate them. We need curators to filter this overabundance more than we need new legions of photographers.
In fact, the new malleability of the image may eventually lead to a profound undermining of photography's status as an inherently truthful pictorial form. . . If even a minimal confidence in photography does not survive, it is questionable whether many pictures will have meaning anymore, not only as symbols but as evidence.
There are more riddles in a stone than in a philosopher's head
Of course, experience strengthens one later.
I use heavy strings, tune low, play hard, and floor it. Floor it. That's technical talk.
Wherever work is done, victory is attained.