Two Local World-owned dailies in the East Midlands are planning to axe up to five staff photographer roles in a radical restructuring of their picture-gathering operations.
The Nottingham Post and the Leicester Mercury are replacing their existing teams of photographers with smaller units with a view to making greater use of submitted content.
At Nottingham, the current team of five staff photographers will be reduced to one full-time content curator and two part-time photographers, one working three days a week and the other four days.
A similar model will be employed at Leicester, with a part-time content curator, one full-time photographer and one part-time photographer in place of the existing photographic team of six.
The changes mean consultations are now under way with 11 employees, five in Nottingham and six in Leicester.
Nottingham Post publisher Mike Sassi, pictured, said: “We have recently reviewed our photographic requirements in Nottingham and will be changing to a new model that consists of one full-time picture curator and editor and two part-time multi-media image journalists.
“As a result, we have entered into consultations with five employees.
“All of our journalists now have technology that allows them to take photos and video. We also have increasing access to copyright-free material.
“In addition, our readers submit their own high-quality images.”
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Five photographers went last week too from LW/TM titles in Essex. Readers will thus soon be bowled over by their own, or fellow-readers’ “high-quality” pictures, in their local newspapers and on the parallel top-notch websites. Oh brave new world… why on earth didn’t someone think of this before?
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Here we go again,another monday,another round of job cuts announced
and perhaps someone can tell me what a “content curator” is ?
I have been in the regional press for over thirty years and never worked alongside one,met one or heard of one,if its an editor ,picture editor or chief photogapher why not say so?
Editors and picture editors(if such a thing still exists) believe ,or fool themselves into believing,that they can get by with a couple of part time photographers covering a wide patch simply because the public,armed with a camera phone,are more than happy to send in snaps just to get their name in the local rag and it costs nowt,quality is no longer a consideration so no doubt the bosses are happy with the arrangement, and by “multi-media image journalists” i assume they mean a trainee reporter with a phone that takes photogaphs and video too?
.
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Richard- you’re so old-fashioned. Thirty years in the business is no great achievement these days, you know, so why not join us on a Content Curatorship Retraining Programme. You could soon be earning £14k a year, with huge opportunities for broadening your horizons in the government’s employment reconfiguration arena.
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December to June circulation was 20500. So by now it will be around 19k. Not surprised that they are cutting back, as a department of 5 is quite high.
I wouldn’t want to be one of the three remaining staff members at the Post, they will be run ragged and probably end up working every weekend.
Being part time staff will cause problems with freelancing as the paper will probably dictate the working pattern. Take the money and run as fast as you can. They can’t make you stay as a part timer. I’m freelance and earn a good salary and much less hours that I used to.
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Really feel for the 5 togs at the Post who I know very well. One of them has been in this position before and another one has been there for at least 20 years that I know of. Really sad days that these talented people will now be out of work.
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Brilliant…masterly timing!
On the same day that Culture minister Ed Vaizey told MPs people both “rely on and respect” the local media. “As the Secretary of State has stated previously, local papers are the bread and butter of journalism – part of the communities they serve, and people rely on and respect them.”
Were not such cruel irony it would laughable.
How apt that the Post Editor talks of a photographic curator.
A curator is exactly what they need as this daily degenerates into a Museum piece, soon to have nothing but a selection of dubious selfies and the continuing glorious parade of PR submitted glossy rubbish.
Just what you should expect of a title with The Post’s long and dubious history!
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‘We also have increasing access to copyright-free material’
Stunning ignorance. Let’s hope someone takes them up on that after they use a ‘copyright-free’ image.
‘All of our journalists now have technology that allows them to take photos and video’
I have a notebook and pen but it wouldn’t make me a particularly good reporter.
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Wonder if Dick was referring to the famed Curatorship Retraining Application Programme (C.R.A.P.) that seems to have swept newsrooms of late?
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Surely this is a problem for teachers. If the national curriculum could be changed to include photography for the masses then the problem would be solved.
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Good grief: we banished our snappers years ago and it didn’t seem to trouble the papers overly. Looks like folks are finally following our lead. In other news, looks like Editors-in-Chief are back in fashion in the old Northcliffe territory down here, judging by this morning’s announcements….
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I always thought a curator was in charge of a museum.
How appropriate, considering where these titles are heading!
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Why are we shocked? ‘User-generated content’ is what Trinity Mirror does (badly). A friend of mine who used to be a TM staff photographer and now works for them as a freelance has a name for people who provide ‘user-generated’ pictures – CWAC’s. Work it out…..
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Nothing is copyright free unless someone is mug enough to sign it away. Except reporters taking crap pix with a phone.
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Me again,
I see they are advertising the curators position on the jobs section of HTFP. So guess there were no takers. Well done to the staff, a tough decision, but the right one.
What does surprise me is that it’s advertised as a full time office based job. Madness. Leaving 7 shifts a week to fill a daily paper. Requiring the successful candidate being full of ideas for images and video. Not easy when there isn’t any staff to generate the content.
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I always associate the word “curator” with a museum and I suspect that is precisely the roles of photographer and sub-editor are heading.
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When I started out (a long time ago admittedly!) as a very raw trainee reporter in the Corby district office of the Northants Evening (then) Telegraph we had a district photographer called Roy Hart. Everybody in the town knew him, he was the public face of the paper. Consequently he had an amazing contacts book. And not only was he a brilliant photographer, he would patiently sit listening to my pretty poor interviewing technique on various jobs, before finally chipping in at the end with a couple of precisely targeted questions which very often turned my drab five-par down-page story into an early-page lead. I wonder if curators can do that.
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Make sure you’ve got a jpeg of that nicely lit portrait Mr Sassi. You won’t get another like that without paying for it.
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Why should they pay trained, skilled people to provide quality content, when they can have unskilled people providing low quality content for free?
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Heyyyyy,nice photo, is it reader supplied or did a front counter receptionist take it?
Or maybe it’s just a stock royalty free image of a tie less man?
Could be a selfie now that everyone’s multi skilled in the old snapper arts
Who needs photographers eh?
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Ya we did that in the US a few years ago.
Now there is no reason to read the paper.
So there are no papers.
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