The Chicago Cubs finally won the World Series last night after 108-year drought. But what has some photojournalists talking are the cover photos published by two of Chicago's biggest newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times.
It was exactly one year ago today that the Chicago Sun-Times earned the photography community's outrage and ridicule after laying off all 28 full-time photojournalists on the newspaper's payroll.
Now that a year has passed and most have moved on from that sad chapter in their lives, Sam Kirkland over at Poynter decided to track down the former Sun-Times staffers and write up the photography equivalent of VH1's old show Where Are They Now?.
Britons tend to take their newspapers a bit more seriously than Yanks, but that hasn't stopped a newspaper chain there from Chicago Sun-Timesing (yes, we verbed it!) its way to ignominy by firing its entire photography staff.
When the Chicago Sun-Times laid off its entire photo staff last year, I commented that one of the problems was the utter failure of website design to appropriately showcase photography. Above is an example of the current design and the way photography is displayed.
News broke yesterday that four of the photographers fired in last May's mass-layoff instituted at the Chicago Sun-Times may soon be rehired, while others will see restitution payments, thanks to a new agreement reached by the Chicago Newspaper Guild. Under the agreement, four photographers would get their jobs back and some of the rest will see one-time payments of $2,000.
Some may be inclined to call that a victory for photojournalism, at least a small one, but they should reconsider.
News regarding the Chicago Sun-Times and its former photo staff is usually of the negative variety. Whether we were covering how the entire staff was unceremoniously laid off, or the fact that they were being replaced by iPhone photography classes, there hasn't been much positive news to report.
That changes today (at least to some degree) thanks to a settlement between Sun-Times Media and a newsroom employees union that managed to get four of the 28 photographers their jobs back, and secure a $2,000 one-time payout for the rest.
In a move that is completely legal and yet already has some people wondering just how much bad press the Chicago Sun-Times is looking to absorb, the beleaguered newspaper is putting the 'striking, one-of-a-kind photos' in its archive up for sale... you know, photos taken by the photojournalists the paper sacked in May of this year.
Andrew Nelles is a 26-year-old freelance photojournalist based in Chicago, Ill. A graduate of Columbia College Chicago, he began freelancing in Chicago in 2009. Andrew was one of the 28 photojournalists laid off from the Chicago Sun-Times in May 2013 after spending 9 months at the paper.
After the Chicago Sun-Times laid off its entire staff of photographers at the end of last month, the newspaper's editor sent out a memo stating that employees would be trained in using their smartphones to contribute photography ("iPhone photography basics," it was called).
We may be starting to see the negative effects of having an army of staff iPhoneographers rather than photojournalists. The side-by-side comparison above shows what the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times newspaper covers looked like on June 26th, 2013, two days after the Stanley Cup finals.
Chicago Sun-Times photographers, who lost their jobs in a mass layoff last week, are not going quietly into oblivion.
In a short segment titled "Photojournalists vs. iPhones" on The Colbert Report yesterday, Stephen Colbert weighed in on the Chicago Sun-Times' decision to lay off its entire photography department.
When the Chicago Sun-Times unexpectedly laid off its entire team of photojournalists last week, Al Podgorski was one of the photographers hearing the bad news at the meeting. Having worked for the paper since 1984, Podgorski's image-making instincts kicked in, and he shot the photograph above showing his colleagues learning that they were being laid off.
The photographer in the center of the frame is John H. White, the renowned photojournalist who joined the Sun-Times in 1978 and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982.
(I'm not saying this is how the conversation went down at the Chicago Sun-Times last week, but I'm saying it could have.)
Good morning, everyone.
Is the entire photography staff here? ...26, 27, 28...yes, it looks like everyone is present and accounted for, so let's begin.
We don't need you.
The Chicago Sun-Times has raised quite a furor talking after unexpectedly laying off its entire photography staff yesterday. Everyone seems to have something to say about it, with some commentators calling it "a sign of the times," while others are wondering whether the newspaper is trying to pull "a union-busting move."
Los Angeles-based writer and comedian Jason Sereno decided to weigh in a different way: he created a tongue-in-cheek Craigslist job listing in Chicago.
The Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff, according to a report from the Chicago Tribune. Twenty full-time staffers received the grave news at a meeting on Thursday morning, leaving them jobless.
Moving forward, the newspaper will be strictly working with freelance photographers, a move that is expected to further cut down on costs in this already financially troubled industry.