Chicago Sun-Times just the beginning
The disruption continues. We may lament the loss of craftspeople in media and communication but it is a fact of life.
My first reaction upon hearing that the Sun Times whacked its entire staff of photographers was one of sadness. Having grown up reading Life and Look magazines, devouring daily newspapers, admiring the work of local photographers like the Boston Herald’s Pulitzer Prize winning Stanley Forman, I had always been a huge fan of great photo journalism.
Try and recall an Olympics, a presidential inauguration, a war, a natural disaster and you can see specific images. In fact there was once a famous ad for Nikon cameras that showed us some of photojournalism’s greatest images without the images.
Just headlines:
A three year old boy saluting his father’s funeral.
A woman crying over the body of a student shot by The National Guard.
An American President lifting his pet beagle up by its ears.
A lone student standing in front of four tanks.
You know the images.
They were powerful, memorable, seared into not only your brain but the collective consciousness of a nation.
Now, however, we prefer volume over quality. Instant over perfection. Crowdsourced versus expert crafted.
The New Yorks Times relies on reader generated images to augment many of its stories. At least in certain circumstances, such as Hurricane Sandy.
Images from Middle East revolutions are as likely to come from participants via Twitter as from embedded professionals.
And in the case of the Boston Marathon bombings, those images not only help tell the story they actually become part of the story.
We can debate forever the downside to the democratization of media and content. We can blame the endless bits of the Internet that make it harder and harder for traditional media to make money and keep the professional reporters and photographers employed. We can criticize the cult of the amateur that arguably diminished standards of excellence.
But it’s a fact of life. We ain’t going backward.
The Sun Times layoffs may have had more to do with the cold hard facts of making a profit at a newspaper these days and the fact that carrying a staff of photographers or a maintaining a menu of food writers just isn’t necessary or fiscally justifiable.
But it’s not a micro problem. It’s not about the Sun Times. It’s about the changes the web and technology continue to impose or enable. Depending on your perspective.
My suggestion, which may or may not be worth anything, is that we all have to change. Learn new skills fast. Embrace the new roles that others can play and then evolve our own.
See you on Instagram?
