Endangered species list: Newspaper staff photographer

I work for a weekly with two papers that's owned by a daily, and we have a full-time photographer. Sometimes he pitches in for the daily, but for the most part, he works just for the two weekly papers. It is a coverage area of four towns though, and I believe in the past, they had at least a part-timer on as well, and it might have even been two full-timers. We also have a paginator who's a really swell photographer - he has a side gig working for a professional photo company - and I think he gets paid on a freelance basis, or is allowed to use photog hours to round out his time card. (He's on this board too, so maybe he'll chime in with his arrangement if he sees this topic.)

The last paper I was at, around the 2007 to 2009 time range, went from three full-time staff photographers to one full-time and two part-time in my time there. Now, they're down to one full-time and one part-time, with the part-timer or another person sometimes getting freelance stuff. The full-timer also used to get overtime back in the day, but that's gone by the wayside, even if it means sending the relatively inexperienced freelancer to a challenging assignment that will definitely be on the front.

Another weekly chain I used to work for pre-2007 tried to eliminate the full-time photog position entirely in 2010, going from one full-timer for six weeklies to just part-time and reporters taking photos. The full-time photographer was going to evenly split between photog and an "editing only" pagination job. They elevated him back to full-time after six months, because they were having too many production and news gathering issues with the arrangement.

 

No, it's a lot of money no matter how cherished the photos are. You're paying the wedding premium, which seems to have about a 500 percent mark-up on everything.
How much does the average person make a week? Around $700, if you're making $35,000 a year (and many are far less than that)?
That photographer can rake in three to four times that for a week of work (one solid day of shooting, maybe a day of prep work, then two or three days of editing, formatting and packaging). That's a lot of money. If you can shoot three weddings a month, even with the cost of good gear, you can probably do very well for yourself.

 

I was getting paid to do MY job. I wasn't getting paid to be the photographer too.

If they wanted to lay off all the professional photographers, they need to understand that meant no more professional photography in the newspaper.

 

He already was doing A job. They wanted him to do more than one, and, I assume, do it for free.

They already were paying him to do one thing, which he was doing with, again I assume, a level of professionalism. But they don't seem to care about paying to put out a quality product, so why should he care? He does his job and goes home.

 

You guys sound like fantastic employees.

When I write a story or take photo MY name is beside it. I sure as hell don't want to intentionally screw up my own work to get back at the "honchos."
God knows I might need a another job down the road; writing, editing, taking photos, layout whatever ...

And ... learn as many skills as you can. Cross-training (in any industry) makes you more valuable than the fucksticks who ain't learning nothing new cause pay is the same.

 

When the "honchos" tell the writers that they need to take pics, too, then that BECOMES part of their job.

A job they can either continue at, or quit.

If I'm scheduled for a design shift and the slot asks me to pick up a story to copyedit, I don't intentionally do a half-ass job and write "Team wins game" as the headline just because I was asked to do more than "my job."

 

My car needs an oil change, too, while we're adding duties to everyone's job.

Don't like it? Quit.

 

It goes both ways. They are free to fire him if they don't like the job he does. They, from what he wrote, don't seem to care. They care that he shoots a photo. He shoots a photo. But they don't care about the quality of the photo, so why should he?

They got a bargain, actually. They paid for nothing more than what they were already paying, and they got a photo.

Professional pride is a wonderful thing, but it can be taken advantage of. The honchos care about the numbers, quality be damned. So did Starman. They want a photo. They got a photo.

 

A brain surgeon gets toilet cleaning duties added to his job description. If he doesn't like it, he's free to quit the hospital.