Chicago Sun Times lays off its entire photo staff

To state the obvious, this isn't the action of a paper in a two-paper town. This is a company desperately treading water until a buyer can be found.

 

In a two-paper town, papers are not competing against each other anymore. They are competing for their own individual survival. For the Sun Times, that means cutting costs to the bone -- and not out hustling the Tribune at any cost.

 

A few of my reporting colleagues have done just that. They won't freelance for us on principle, and I've asked more than once -- and even got our new top editor to ask.

Meanwhile, a news-side guy who took just about every assignment offered was recently hired back full-time with benefits. (He had been with the company a while, albeit bouncing between several papers and multiple jobs, but I'm guessing he took a pay cut.) Several photogs make quite a bit of their freelance incomes from the paper(s) for whom they were formerly on staff.

If you have another source of income, principles are great. But principles don't pay for groceries. :-\

 

I could see taking some freelance gigs if there were across the board layoffs. But if I was a photog at a paper that size and they eliminated the entire photo staff, I'd never shoot for them. I've known some photographers who were canned who have gone on to do pretty well for themselves and wouldn't need the paper's assignments.

 

Still a sore spot.



Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times Covers After the World Series

 

But Arietta's mom said she'd drop off some photos after the game ... she did a neat writeup too.

 

There were eleventy million "pro" photographs available from AP/Getty/etc. To me this is simply a failure of photo SELECTION, not necessarily "we didn't have any of our guys there because we fired 'em all." Sometimes being forced to use your own guys (who have only a fraction of the images available elsewhere) can be a negative.

Maybe the S-T was trying too hard to make the wraparound-two-covers shape work. But it's not THAT odd of a horizontal. There HAD to be many, many superior images available that just didn't get chosen for whatever reason.

As for the Trib, I'm a little torn on the "At last!" being under the photo. I can see the argument for why it was done, but . . . that's about as low on the page for a 500(?)-point headline I've ever seen.

 

What's a photo staff?

 

The photo was way better than that hed. Absolutely the right call.