A Photo Finish at the Sun Times?

Chicago Sun Times (Photo credit: stu_spivack)

The Chicago Sun Times recently and suddenly laid off all 28 people in its full-time photography staff.  This included photographers and editors for its flagship paper and all of its suburban papers.

My first reaction was how could that only be 28 people?  To cover all of Chicagoland?  Including the suburbs?

My second reaction was this must be the beginning of the end for a once venerable major market newspaper.  How long can the Chicago Sun Times last without photographers and photo editors?  After all, if a picture is worth a thousand words, reporters are going to have to write a lot more to make up for missing photos.  Right?

Not so, says the leadership at the Sun Times.  Freelancers and reporters will provide plenty of photos, they say.  Plus, the move was precipitated by a shift to more video content for its online presence.

So, in reality, this move is the start of a new beginning for the newspaper that started in Chicago almost 170 years ago.  This move should be seen as a bold move into the brave, sorta new world of online journalism.  This is a move forward; a positive future-affirming strategic step.  So says the leadership of the Sun Times Media Group, the Sun Times parent organization.

As a subscriber of two daily and two weekly newspapers (not the Sun Times though because they stopped delivering where I live many years ago), I hope they are right.  

As a believer in the importance of having multiple journalistic voices in a community, I hope they are right.

As a lover of photography, including photojournalism, I suspect that they are wrong.  I am afraid that the Sun Times leadership will soon find the power that amazing photography has to draw readers and attention to their publication.  And that the lack of it will make it easier to ignore their publication.  I suspect they will learn that there are some stories that need to be told pictorially to really have an impact.  I worry that other newspapers will follow suit and will count on writers, presumably with their cellphones, to snap pictures while they are trying to get a story, forcing them to do neither as well as they could.

I hope that this is just a strategic move and that the Sun Times continues their long and fruitful contribution to Chicago journalism.  I worry that this is another sign of the slow, creeping demise of print journalism.

I can just picture it.

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Learning How to Read

There has been a lot of talk about how the advent of social media and things like blogging has changed media, transformed writing and allowed for the rise of citizen journalists.  There has been some discussion about the responsibilities of writers in social media (including in this blog.)  There has been less discussion about the growing need to be a responsible reader.

When our primary news and information sources came from mainstream media (newspapers, television, books, radio) it got to us after having passed through several filters of journalists and editors.  These filters had many effects on the news we consumed, including the fact that a news story had to pass muster with numerous people to make it on the air or on the page.

With the explosion of "news" sources those filters are greatly reduced or removed altogether.  While this allows for more and more diverse voices and a more immediate access to information, it also allows for more deception, inaccuracies and lies to be paraded around as news and facts.  In the absence of editors, and probably despite them, we must learn to be more judicious and critical readers.

There has always been a difference in the reliability of news sources.  Walter Cronkite in the 60s and 70s was above reproach.  He signed off every newscast with "That's the way it was..." and it WAS the way it was!  Mostly because Walter Cronkite had said so!  I have no idea if Mr. Cronkite was any better of a journalist than the newscasters today.  I do know that he had the trust of the public.

To be a responsible consumer of media these days, you need to do more that to turn to wherever Walter Cronkite is broadcasting.  You need to assess the sources of the messages you are consuming.  Are they coming from a reputable journalist or a lonely writer (your truly included) who is expressing opinions without access to resources for fact checking and data inputs.

I do not mean to suggest that lonely writers are always less credible or that established journalists are more credible.  I am only urging that as a responsible reader, you should assess the "quality" of the source of the information you are consuming.  In a way it is no different than how you would judge a restaurant.  You can still get food poisoning from a restaurant with white tablecloths and four forks and you can eat the best burger you will ever find with a hole in the wall place with cracked linoleum floors and a creaky fan in the corner.  But those would be exceptions to the rule.

As readers in the internet age, we are no longer constrained about reading from our local sources of information.  While that means we can more easily learn about events in Bangladesh and popular music trends in Omsk, it also means we are reading from unfamiliar sources.

Ultimately, as with so many things, it comes down to trust.  As a responsible reader, you need to pay attention to your sources.  You need to figure out if you can trust the ramblings of a favorite blogger (ahem) or the anonymous sources of the established reporter.

You have the choice.  Choose wisely.

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