Print companies have to cut corners to stay in business. I just wonder if many will run out of corners to cut and go bankrupt as people get used to free online content. As a child everyone subscribed to the local newspaper and also several magazines as well. We are now the only house I see on our block with a newspaper box by our mailbox. I still think newspapers are important especially local ones where they offer news you just can't get anywhere else. We had a big corruption scandal involving the school superintendent that required months of in depth investigation and research before a full story could be done and this is something TV stations do not have the will or resources to do. Were it not for the local paper it is very likely this corruption would have continued unabated.
In a few years smart phone cameras will continue to progress to the point that they are nearly as good as dedicated cameras. Already there are some phones using CMOS sensors with optical zoom available by Sharp and Toshiba in Japan.
I think one of the concerns is that news moves too fast for print. By the time you print it, it is old. Same with the imagery. You take all that expense grabbing an excellent image, and 20 seconds later, a new news headline hits and your image is 4 pages deep online.
Back in the day, as you recall, people actually cared about the news and took the time to stay involved : )
I know the entire market took a -1% hit yesterday but NINOY (Nikon) was down over 2% and CAJ (Canon) was down over 4%. With the Yen being weaker I would have expect less of a drop for these two stocks. Perhaps these are good shorts considering the trend of firing photographers.
…why didn't they just train the staff who got fired on the iPhone instead? Everyone would have been happy. The paper got what they wanted and the photographers kept their jobs.
Because they just didn't want to pay them anymore. That's really it. They can pay a freelancer WAY less money than a salaried professional photographer.
Originally Posted by jungmark
It's hard to embed video in a newspaper.
Ten years from now this will be a laughable sentence.
That's true. However, when most news is online and pictures are usually no more than 800x600, and printed magazines are slowly going out of style and read on tablets, SLR quality is not a necessity methink. It's sad.
I could make the opposite case. Now that most newspapers are online and the majority of photos are printed in color, you need higher quality than the age when photos were printed on cheap newsprint with low resolution screen printing.
But this isn't just about the technical quality of photographs. The best photo-journalism combines visual "facts" with art. It's not just about capturing the moment. Why don't they just fire all the reporters as well and rely upon Twitter and Facebook postings to gather the news?
The other problem with using an iPhone is that the photos can be too easily manipulated without any record of the original image, since the iPhone is not a file-based device. With a pro or semi-pro DSLR, you always have the original raw file (if proper procedures are followed). When you manipulate the photo in Photoshop or other such apps, the original raw file is untouched, the adjustments are all in a "sidecar" file.
While I understand that printed newspapers are largely dying and that the main source of income for these newspapers, classified advertising, is long gone and that there's also a tremendous reduction in display advertising as marketing dollars have moved to the web, when they take steps like this, they're simply signing a suicide pact. I expect my newspaper to at least have the pretense of being professional. It's one thing to give iPhones to reporters to catch things that happen when photographers aren't around or simply to record a record of their reporting and investigations, but it's quite another to fire all pro photographers. Do they really think that any of the reporters are ever going to again capture a photo that can win a Pulitzer Prize?
I love my iPhone and the best camera to have is the one that you carry with you, but when I want to accomplish something serious, I drag out my Nikon and big, heavy lenses. It's a pain, but it's the best way to achieve anything resembling quality. Giving journalists iPhones to take photos is the equivalent of giving photographers "Brownie" cameras in the 1950s-60s. No one did that. Pro journalists originally used either large format cameras like the Graflex Speed Graphic or medium format cameras like the Rolleiflex until Leica and Nikon rangefinders came along, with the Nikon beginning in 1948. Nikon lenses were used on a Leica body by photo journalist David Duncan, who was covering the Korean War. When the prints were sent to New York publishers, they wondered why this guy was using an 8x10 camera in a war zone - that's how good they looked. After that, many photo journalists switched to 35mm, especially after the Nikon F SLR was released in 1959 and Canon after that. Even the paparazzi still use DSLRs and they don't give a damn about quality - they're just trying to catch (famous) people at their worst.
I know the entire market took a -1% hit yesterday but NINOY (Nikon) was down over 2% and CAJ (Canon) was down over 4%. With the Yen being weaker I would have expect less of a drop for these two stocks. Perhaps these are good shorts considering the trend of firing photographers.
I think that's completely unrelated. Nikon and Canon have been trending down largely because point and shoot cameras are in serious decline due to the advent of higher quality smartphone cameras. (If you don't care about quality, you might as well use your smartphone). And DSLRs are down as well. Canon being down twice as much as Nikon indicates that something else is at play because Canon is a far larger and far more diverse company than Nikon.
Shipments of Japanese DSLR cameras for the first three months of the year are down 23%, mirrorless cameras are down 19% (a surprise, since this was supposed to be a growth market) and point-and-shoot cameras are down 48% over previous year. 25 photographers getting fired has no substantive impact on these numbers. This has far more to do with the economy, especially in Japan and Europe. Some European countries have unemployment rates among young men of 25 to 50%. Those people aren't spending money on photography (or much of anything else for that matter.) The U.S. economy looks fantastic in comparison.
In addition, Nikon and Canon don't make the bulk of their earnings at the high end. The profits are all in the middle - in the "enthusiast" lines. Nikon doesn't sell that many D4s ($6000 body) and Canon doesn't sell that many EOS-1Dx's ($6800 body). Of course, if every newspaper decided to fire all their photographers, then there would probably be impact. But one of the biggest areas of journalistic still photography is sports and one is not capturing any decent closeups that stop action with an iPhone. It still requires a 600 to 800mm reach, the ability to shoot many frames per second and a low-noise sensor. So I don't think sports photographers are going away. The Chicago Sun-Times may have fired their staff photographers, but my bet is that any number of the photographers come back as freelancers. Part of this is a game to show how payroll was reduced.
In all likelihood, this decision is driven by cost. Staff photographers cost serious money, and print newspapers are bleeding cash. They're all looking for ways to cut costs or they'll go out of business. They may be just putting off the inevitable, but it's like a sick patient who'll do anything to feel better.
This is stupid. Being a good photographer isn't just training. It's experience and creativity that's makes them shine. Just because you can take a pic of your cat doesn't make you a prof photog.
But in the world of news gathering, nobody is looking for an artistic shot with just the right DOF. The purpose of news photography is to capture the moment and convey real-time events. In this respect, you can be trained to take photos and don't need to have an ounce of artistic talent in order to shoot for newspapers.
There's Photojournalism and there's pictures of things in newspapers. Many newspapers don't use the former for 95% of their images. Having a staff of photojournalists of any size larger than three is going the way of the dodo bird except for the publications who really pride themselves on their own images. The bean counters hold the reins and my opinion that it's a shame is hypocritical since I've barely bought a newspaper in an eternity and I barely pay attention to the images on the places where I do read my news.
This is stupid. Being a good photographer isn't just training. It's experience and creativity that's makes them shine. Just because you can take a pic of your cat doesn't make you a prof photog.
This is actually a challenge to good photographers. Step up your game and learn the essentials of on-the-scene reporting. At my business, I'm responsible for everything except for the few things I hire out. One has to take on more responsibilities to survive in this world.
And in other news, all Holywood directors and cinematographers have been fired. in their place, LA taxi cab drivers have been given iPhones, and 15 minutes of training, to shoot all future feature films. A Holywood studio executive stated, " who needs to spend all this money on artistic talent when any three year old with an iPhone can do this job".
Haha! That's not how "Hollywood" works. Movies are (more often than not) independently developed with outside financing and everyone works independently or with an LLC formed for the sole purpose of making that movie, unless a big studio brings in a group of people to work on one of their properties. There is no "Hollywood", just projects and hired talent. The studios are still "the" way to get a major movie advertised and distributed.
Articles say businesses are struggling under the new health care requirements, that they will have to let some employees go in to maintain the current coverage for the other employees. The Sun-Times appears to have done just that with their professional photographers, whom they have deemed least important to the company. Doing away with professionals is becoming common. That's how the garment buildings in Bangladesh are built. They literally, don't stand the test of time!
I'm so thankful I own a small business and have no employees. It's tough to lay off people who are good workers, but especially tough if the reason is due to regulatory or legal stupidity.
As a seasoned reporter AND photographer AND a guy with a journalism degree my take on this is quite serious. It's not only an unprofessional move that will yield unprofessional results but also puts the responsibility of taking good/representative photo images on the back of the reporter. And, btw, the reporters won't, I'd bet, be paid extra for shots they take as photojournalists and neither will the public. The C-Sun Times was the the birthplace of many journalistic "firsts".....this isn't one of them.
As a seasoned reporter AND photographer AND a guy with a journalism degree my take on this is quite serious. It's not only an unprofessional move that will yield unprofessional results but also puts the responsibility of taking good/representative photo images on the back of the reporter. And, btw, the reporters won't, I'd bet, be paid extra for shots they take as photojournalists and neither will the public.
The C-Sun Times was the the birthplace of many journalistic "firsts".....this isn't one of them.
On the other hand, the alternative is " you're fired." Is that preferable? Newspapers are dying and must make a painful transition or disappear.
If this story accurately represents what Chicago Sun-Times is planning to do, it is not a decision about iPhonegraphy being good enough tools. It is a decision to forsake photography as an important tool.
Art f**ing haters!
Just look at current HollyWood.
In the end art is the only window to the soul of any society / civilization.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by gwmac
Print companies have to cut corners to stay in business. I just wonder if many will run out of corners to cut and go bankrupt as people get used to free online content. As a child everyone subscribed to the local newspaper and also several magazines as well. We are now the only house I see on our block with a newspaper box by our mailbox. I still think newspapers are important especially local ones where they offer news you just can't get anywhere else. We had a big corruption scandal involving the school superintendent that required months of in depth investigation and research before a full story could be done and this is something TV stations do not have the will or resources to do. Were it not for the local paper it is very likely this corruption would have continued unabated.
In a few years smart phone cameras will continue to progress to the point that they are nearly as good as dedicated cameras. Already there are some phones using CMOS sensors with optical zoom available by Sharp and Toshiba in Japan.
I think one of the concerns is that news moves too fast for print. By the time you print it, it is old. Same with the imagery. You take all that expense grabbing an excellent image, and 20 seconds later, a new news headline hits and your image is 4 pages deep online.
Back in the day, as you recall, people actually cared about the news and took the time to stay involved : )
I know the entire market took a -1% hit yesterday but NINOY (Nikon) was down over 2% and CAJ (Canon) was down over 4%. With the Yen being weaker I would have expect less of a drop for these two stocks. Perhaps these are good shorts considering the trend of firing photographers.
It's hard to embed video in a newspaper.
Originally Posted by Thecisco
…why didn't they just train the staff who got fired on the iPhone instead? Everyone would have been happy. The paper got what they wanted and the photographers kept their jobs.
Because they just didn't want to pay them anymore. That's really it. They can pay a freelancer WAY less money than a salaried professional photographer.
Originally Posted by jungmark
It's hard to embed video in a newspaper.
Ten years from now this will be a laughable sentence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sflocal
That's true. However, when most news is online and pictures are usually no more than 800x600, and printed magazines are slowly going out of style and read on tablets, SLR quality is not a necessity methink. It's sad.
I could make the opposite case. Now that most newspapers are online and the majority of photos are printed in color, you need higher quality than the age when photos were printed on cheap newsprint with low resolution screen printing.
But this isn't just about the technical quality of photographs. The best photo-journalism combines visual "facts" with art. It's not just about capturing the moment. Why don't they just fire all the reporters as well and rely upon Twitter and Facebook postings to gather the news?
The other problem with using an iPhone is that the photos can be too easily manipulated without any record of the original image, since the iPhone is not a file-based device. With a pro or semi-pro DSLR, you always have the original raw file (if proper procedures are followed). When you manipulate the photo in Photoshop or other such apps, the original raw file is untouched, the adjustments are all in a "sidecar" file.
While I understand that printed newspapers are largely dying and that the main source of income for these newspapers, classified advertising, is long gone and that there's also a tremendous reduction in display advertising as marketing dollars have moved to the web, when they take steps like this, they're simply signing a suicide pact. I expect my newspaper to at least have the pretense of being professional. It's one thing to give iPhones to reporters to catch things that happen when photographers aren't around or simply to record a record of their reporting and investigations, but it's quite another to fire all pro photographers. Do they really think that any of the reporters are ever going to again capture a photo that can win a Pulitzer Prize?
I love my iPhone and the best camera to have is the one that you carry with you, but when I want to accomplish something serious, I drag out my Nikon and big, heavy lenses. It's a pain, but it's the best way to achieve anything resembling quality. Giving journalists iPhones to take photos is the equivalent of giving photographers "Brownie" cameras in the 1950s-60s. No one did that. Pro journalists originally used either large format cameras like the Graflex Speed Graphic or medium format cameras like the Rolleiflex until Leica and Nikon rangefinders came along, with the Nikon beginning in 1948. Nikon lenses were used on a Leica body by photo journalist David Duncan, who was covering the Korean War. When the prints were sent to New York publishers, they wondered why this guy was using an 8x10 camera in a war zone - that's how good they looked. After that, many photo journalists switched to 35mm, especially after the Nikon F SLR was released in 1959 and Canon after that. Even the paparazzi still use DSLRs and they don't give a damn about quality - they're just trying to catch (famous) people at their worst.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
I know the entire market took a -1% hit yesterday but NINOY (Nikon) was down over 2% and CAJ (Canon) was down over 4%. With the Yen being weaker I would have expect less of a drop for these two stocks. Perhaps these are good shorts considering the trend of firing photographers.
I think that's completely unrelated. Nikon and Canon have been trending down largely because point and shoot cameras are in serious decline due to the advent of higher quality smartphone cameras. (If you don't care about quality, you might as well use your smartphone). And DSLRs are down as well. Canon being down twice as much as Nikon indicates that something else is at play because Canon is a far larger and far more diverse company than Nikon.
Shipments of Japanese DSLR cameras for the first three months of the year are down 23%, mirrorless cameras are down 19% (a surprise, since this was supposed to be a growth market) and point-and-shoot cameras are down 48% over previous year. 25 photographers getting fired has no substantive impact on these numbers. This has far more to do with the economy, especially in Japan and Europe. Some European countries have unemployment rates among young men of 25 to 50%. Those people aren't spending money on photography (or much of anything else for that matter.) The U.S. economy looks fantastic in comparison.
In addition, Nikon and Canon don't make the bulk of their earnings at the high end. The profits are all in the middle - in the "enthusiast" lines. Nikon doesn't sell that many D4s ($6000 body) and Canon doesn't sell that many EOS-1Dx's ($6800 body). Of course, if every newspaper decided to fire all their photographers, then there would probably be impact. But one of the biggest areas of journalistic still photography is sports and one is not capturing any decent closeups that stop action with an iPhone. It still requires a 600 to 800mm reach, the ability to shoot many frames per second and a low-noise sensor. So I don't think sports photographers are going away. The Chicago Sun-Times may have fired their staff photographers, but my bet is that any number of the photographers come back as freelancers. Part of this is a game to show how payroll was reduced.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jungmark
This is stupid. Being a good photographer isn't just training. It's experience and creativity that's makes them shine. Just because you can take a pic of your cat doesn't make you a prof photog.
But in the world of news gathering, nobody is looking for an artistic shot with just the right DOF. The purpose of news photography is to capture the moment and convey real-time events. In this respect, you can be trained to take photos and don't need to have an ounce of artistic talent in order to shoot for newspapers.
There's Photojournalism and there's pictures of things in newspapers. Many newspapers don't use the former for 95% of their images. Having a staff of photojournalists of any size larger than three is going the way of the dodo bird except for the publications who really pride themselves on their own images. The bean counters hold the reins and my opinion that it's a shame is hypocritical since I've barely bought a newspaper in an eternity and I barely pay attention to the images on the places where I do read my news.
(And I'm a professional photographer.)
Not a Harry Potter fan, I take it......
This is actually a challenge to good photographers. Step up your game and learn the essentials of on-the-scene reporting. At my business, I'm responsible for everything except for the few things I hire out. One has to take on more responsibilities to survive in this world.
Haha! That's not how "Hollywood" works. Movies are (more often than not) independently developed with outside financing and everyone works independently or with an LLC formed for the sole purpose of making that movie, unless a big studio brings in a group of people to work on one of their properties. There is no "Hollywood", just projects and hired talent. The studios are still "the" way to get a major movie advertised and distributed.
deleted
I'm so thankful I own a small business and have no employees. It's tough to lay off people who are good workers, but especially tough if the reason is due to regulatory or legal stupidity.
The C-Sun Times was the the birthplace of many journalistic "firsts".....this isn't one of them.
On the other hand, the alternative is " you're fired." Is that preferable? Newspapers are dying and must make a painful transition or disappear.
Photos will all be wire service and freebie junk submitted by wannabes.
The Sun Times is obviously in its death throes and Chicago is about to become a one newspaper town.
Possibly a zero newspaper town... but honestly who reads a paper anymore? Everything I read or peruse opinions is digital these days.
Quote:
Originally Posted by StruckPaper
If this story accurately represents what Chicago Sun-Times is planning to do, it is not a decision about iPhonegraphy being good enough tools. It is a decision to forsake photography as an important tool.
Art f**ing haters!
Just look at current HollyWood.
In the end art is the only window to the soul of any society / civilization.