The Sad State of Newspaper Photojournalism
Well the mighty misguided ax of management fell once again on our lowly photography department at The Capital newspaper. My wonderful colleague Colleen Dugan was called to the managing editor's office right as she was about to start her shift yesterday. At the same time our chief photographer/photo editor told fellow shooter Joshua McKerrow and myself that Colleen was being let go. The bean counters strike again.
This has been a tough year for our little photo department. We went from having a staff of six, one Photo Editor, four Capital Photographers and one Maryland Gazette Photographer, to a staff of three, a chief photog, who is basically strapped to a desk all day and can't go out and shoot, Joshua and myself. So the paper now, basically, has two full time shooters to cover an entire county and a seven day week. We are a 41,000 circulation paper, having just two shooters is ridiculous.
How this will be accomplished, at least so I am told, is that we will be shooting less mundane assignments, leaving them to reporters with point and shoot cameras. We have to train them in the basics of composition and what makes a good picture. I guess that is when they will be able to cut Josh and myself loose.
OK, so Josh and I will be doing the good stuff, I'll believe it when I see it. That does not tell me how we are going to cover a seven day work week and have someone available in both the morning and evenings. The way we think it will work now is one shooter will have Friday and Saturday off, leaving one shooter those days. We used to have four shooters on Friday and two on Saturday. The other shooter will be off Sunday and Monday. Sunday, always had only one shooter and there was two on Monday. There are a lot of gaps in this plan. I am not sure how they will fill them, I guess with reporters with cameras.
The people that run papers across the country are cutting them to the bone and then some to keep the paper profitable or god forbid from losing some money during a recession. We have lost staff like crazy in the last two years. Sure the web has a large part in the newspapers demise, but it also short sighted management. They must realize that cutting staff, pages, local news content and other things from our product, they are giving people a reason not to buy the paper. Why would someone pay more for less? We need to keep our staffs so we can be in the local area, gathering the local news, that our readers want. And you can't tell me that with all the cuts we can keep up the same level of coverage for very long. We are getting burned out and morale is shot.
This brings me to my point for this post. If you care about quality photojournalism in you local papers, and I am not just talking about The Capital, make your concerns known to the management. Write letters and make phone calls telling them the pictures are just as important as the words. Tell them that you don't want reporters shooting bad photos, just to have a photo with their story. Reporters that can shoot are few and far between and just like I don't want to write a bad story, they don't want to shoot bad photos. Finally, don't cancel that newspaper subscription just because you can get it for free on the web. Without the printed paper, we can't pay for the web.
This has been a tough year for our little photo department. We went from having a staff of six, one Photo Editor, four Capital Photographers and one Maryland Gazette Photographer, to a staff of three, a chief photog, who is basically strapped to a desk all day and can't go out and shoot, Joshua and myself. So the paper now, basically, has two full time shooters to cover an entire county and a seven day week. We are a 41,000 circulation paper, having just two shooters is ridiculous.
How this will be accomplished, at least so I am told, is that we will be shooting less mundane assignments, leaving them to reporters with point and shoot cameras. We have to train them in the basics of composition and what makes a good picture. I guess that is when they will be able to cut Josh and myself loose.
OK, so Josh and I will be doing the good stuff, I'll believe it when I see it. That does not tell me how we are going to cover a seven day work week and have someone available in both the morning and evenings. The way we think it will work now is one shooter will have Friday and Saturday off, leaving one shooter those days. We used to have four shooters on Friday and two on Saturday. The other shooter will be off Sunday and Monday. Sunday, always had only one shooter and there was two on Monday. There are a lot of gaps in this plan. I am not sure how they will fill them, I guess with reporters with cameras.
The people that run papers across the country are cutting them to the bone and then some to keep the paper profitable or god forbid from losing some money during a recession. We have lost staff like crazy in the last two years. Sure the web has a large part in the newspapers demise, but it also short sighted management. They must realize that cutting staff, pages, local news content and other things from our product, they are giving people a reason not to buy the paper. Why would someone pay more for less? We need to keep our staffs so we can be in the local area, gathering the local news, that our readers want. And you can't tell me that with all the cuts we can keep up the same level of coverage for very long. We are getting burned out and morale is shot.
This brings me to my point for this post. If you care about quality photojournalism in you local papers, and I am not just talking about The Capital, make your concerns known to the management. Write letters and make phone calls telling them the pictures are just as important as the words. Tell them that you don't want reporters shooting bad photos, just to have a photo with their story. Reporters that can shoot are few and far between and just like I don't want to write a bad story, they don't want to shoot bad photos. Finally, don't cancel that newspaper subscription just because you can get it for free on the web. Without the printed paper, we can't pay for the web.
Comments
Long live print!!
Too bad people are usually too full of themselves when they screw up the really big things.