A never-ending death by a thousand cuts, this industry:
The Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff, and plans to use freelance photographers and reporters to shoot photos and video going forward, the newspaper said.
A total of 28 full-time staffers received the news Thursday morning at a meeting held at the Sun-Times offices in Chicago, according to sources familiar with the situation. The layoffs are effective immediately.
“The Sun-Times business is changing rapidly and our audiences are consistently seeking more video content with their news. We have made great progress in meeting this demand and are focused on bolstering our reporting capabilities with video and other multimedia elements. The Chicago Sun-Times continues to evolve with our digitally savvy customers, and as a result, we have had to restructure the way we manage multimedia, including photography, across the network.”
It’s a shame: Our appetite for information and news (or, heh, “news”) only grows with more and more access, but our attention span decreases as does the quality — and resources behind — the drivel that information providers publish to try to fetch our clicks.
I don’t blame them for whoring with dumb click bait like “Top 10” lists and “what you don’t know but could kill you” headlines that deliver nothing. It’s just sad. That used to be more associated with local TV news and tabloids. Now it’s ubiquitous.
There’s no easy or obvious solution; we have a whole generation accustomed to free, instant access. That’s not so good for digging up nor paying for relevant news. Now it’s not so good for accomplished photographers. (“Just Instagram that shit, man.”)
Of course the Tribune is all too ready to report on its rival’s slaughter of its photography staff.
The weirdest thing for me, and it gets back to the local TV news tripe, is that even granting the Sun-Times’ spin on their firings, there really is an appetite for video. Studies and traffic stats reflect it.
You can say less, clarify less and correct less in short quick videos than you can in written articles, yet as a whole we are somehow enamored and entranced by moving pictures, however vacuous they may be.
I have a written word bias. Good photos complement the written word. But poor video? Does little for me and, I think, consumes too much time. But that’s an increasingly minority view in this changing world…
Fall of Because 