Chicago Sun-Times Lays Off Entire Photo Staff. 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. The lay-off decision reflects the importance of video in today’s digital news reporting, according to a Sun-Times statement: “The Sun-Times business is changing rapidly and our audiences are consistently seeking more video content with their news.
We have made great progress in meeting this demand and are focused on bolstering our reporting capabilities with video and other multimedia elements. More and more print publications are dumping full-time staff photographers in favor of freelance photojournalism. Thanks for sending in the tip, Brian. How the Internet Killed Photojournalism. The Sun-Times business is changing rapidly and our audiences are consistently seeking more video content with their news.
We have made great progress in meeting this demand and are focused on bolstering our reporting capabilities with video and other multimedia elements. The Chicago Sun-Times continues to evolve with our digitally savvy customers, and as a result, we have had to restructure the way we manage multimedia, including photography, across the network. The Chicago Sun-Times laid off its entire photography staff today (including Pulitzer Prize Winner John White) as a part of what is being described as a shift in consumption towards video content. I suppose there could be a kernel of truth in this statement, but it doesn’t really speak to the whole truth about how photojournalism has suffered because of the Internet. The Sun-Times , like its crosstown rival The Chicago Tribune , has suffered from falling print subscriptions .
But let me be clear. How Much Does Sun-Times Media Pay Its Freelance Photographers? Want a peek into how much freelance photographers get paid by Sun-Times Media?
The issue is one that may be on many a photographers mind after the Chicago Sun-Times decided to fire its entire staff of photographers. Thanks to a “leaked” memo, we now have some idea. Media blogger Jim Romenesko has published a memo he received from a reader. The note, which has the subject line “Rates, expectations, etc.,” was written by Geoff Scheerer, the photo editor of Pioneer Press Newspapers. Pioneer Press Newspapers is one of the newspaper businesses owned by Sun-Times Media Group, the parent company of the Chicago Sun-Times. In the the memo, Scheerer writes that he has been responsible for booking all of the freelance photography assignments for Sun-Times Media’s suburban newspapers (a responsibility that started four weeks ago), and that he hopes to clarify the rates that will be paid to photographers from here on out.
Want to shoot sports? (via Jim Romenesko via The Click) Image credit: money! Reuters Institute Digital News Report. HuffPost Live Breaks Down 'Fourth Wall' With Google+ Hangouts. Google has hosted video-chat Hangouts with everyone from the Muppets to President Obama, but for the past seven months, the search giant has also helped host the more than 7,000 guests who have appeared on Huffington Post Live.
The media giant, now owned by AOL, kicked off HuffPost Live in August as a live-streaming network to complement its blogging empire. In launching HuffPost Live, Arianna Huffington said that "the news is no longer about a few people telling everyone what happened – it's about everyone telling everyone what's happening right now, [and] this shift from presentation to participation is what fuels HuffPost Live. " In order to add that participation component, however, HuffPo needed an easy-to-use video service that let it tap into the Huffington Post audience. In an interview with PCMag this week, Huffington Post CTO John Pavley said the company considered a number of video-chat options, including Skype, but ultimately landed on Google+ Hangouts. How To Perform A Competitive Blog Analysis (CHECKLIST)
If content is king, then a blog is most certainly the throne.
In fact, 60% of businesses have a business or company blog, according to blogging.org. With so much of a company’s content marketing strategy laid out on a public blog, savvy marketers should execute numerous and frequent analyses in order to glean insights into their competitor’s strategy. A competitive analysis can inform your own blogging efforts and reveal opportunities to build your community. Here is a checklist of things to look for as you analyze your competitor’s blog: Architecture: Is the blog on a subdomain, subdirectory or a different URL altogether?
Content Management System: Are they utilizing WordPress? Quantity of Unique Authors: How many authors are contributing to the blog on average? Posting Frequency: How often are new articles published? Topic Model: What topics are they blogging about? What The New Story of Journalism Is Really About.
Thought Leaders and Organisations. Situation and Trends. Copyright. Decline of Print. Other pearltrees. Australian Newspaper Companies. Business Models. Online Display Ads: The Brand Awareness Black Hole. 5 Big Brands Confirm That Content Marketing Is The Key To Your Consumer. Editorial Content Sales. Concepts. Consulting to the news industry.