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NUJ to stage debate on ‘crisis’ in news photography

A debate on the future of press photography at regional and national papers is to be held by a branch of the National Union of Journalists next week.

The Birmingham and Coventry branch is holding the event to discuss the ‘crisis’ in news photography, which has seen many regional newspaper groups cut their numbers of staff photographers.

HTFP blogger Steve Dyson, a former Birmingham Mail editor, will chair the meeting and speakers include former photojournalism tutor Paul Delmar, photographer Bob Smith who was made redundant by Newsquest and Chris Morley, Northern and Midlands organiser for the NUJ.

The ‘Photo Finish’ event will look at how employers can be pursuaded that quality images are essential for successful media organisations.Photo finish flyer

 

A leaflet about the event says: “There is a crisis in news photography. In the last few months, almost all regional newspaper groups have savagely cut their numbers of staff photographers – down to a single worker at many centres and in some cases none at all.

“A similar process is hitting the nationals. Companies believe they can simply get freelances when they like and fill remaining editorial ‘holes’ with ‘user-generated content’.

“But the NUJ believes poverty rates cannot cover the costs needed to invest in modern photographic kit.”

The debate takes place on 14 April from 7-9pm at Committee Room 3-4, Birmingham Council House.

24 comments

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  • April 6, 2015 at 9:22 am
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    Catch 22 – can’t afford photographers – can’t afford not to have photographers. Professionla photography counts for so much, in this age of mobile phones images and reader generated content, but this is not appreciated by ‘management’. If there is one move that will accelerate the now terminal decline of local print journalism (apart from sacking editors), it is the destruction of photographic departments up and down the country.

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  • April 6, 2015 at 12:51 pm
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    You can always depend on the NUJ to have their fingers on the pulse.
    Two words… ‘horse’ and ‘bolted’.

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  • April 7, 2015 at 9:35 am
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    Our togs now have to use their own vehicles, own cameras, and graft for shells without the peanuts inside – euphemistically called a freelance rate. Still, the reader’s pic illustrating a football report I subbed recently almost had the ball and the players’ feet in it, so all is not lost. Click, click.

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  • April 7, 2015 at 9:38 am
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    My girlfriends tells some tinpot amateur website had action video from her local team’s big Saturday game, but her JP local paper had zilch and never takes any. I thought it was “digital first”. Maybe they don’t have any snappers left to do it?

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  • April 7, 2015 at 9:46 am
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    I think you are wrong Showbeastie – it is not yet too late. The NUJ fights for photographers as surely as it does for all its members but in this case, a whole skill is now under threat in our industry. That skill is not going to disappear overnight, but action to pull back from the point of no return is needed soon. Hence the reason for the meeting. This is a chance to rally behind workers who are not appreciated by the bosses today but are a key part of the future for quality media.

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  • April 7, 2015 at 10:20 am
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    On the pulse is not where you would usually expect to find find the NUJ/s fingers!

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  • April 7, 2015 at 10:41 am
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    I think you only have to look at Facebook and Instagram etc to see what the issue is. Life moves quick, people tolerate poor pictures, they want to look at something, be part of it for a minute, move on to the next thing. Quality just doesn’t matter, it’s immediacy and being there that matters. Or, put it this way, everyone can take an image of some sort nowadays and it’s online within minutes. By the time the ‘paper’ publishes it people have moved on. Very sad

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  • April 7, 2015 at 11:18 am
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    Scoop, I understand what you are saying but…
    If newspapers are to survive, they must do this by being professional otherwise they are no different to the social media websites you mention.
    This is as true for photography as it is for the written word.

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  • April 7, 2015 at 11:21 am
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    And what are they hoping to achieve, managers aren’t going to suddenly re-employ loads of photographers. Maybe 10 years ago I would have attended, but it’s too little, too late.
    My local paper the Birmingham Mail has had some stunners recently, it seems it’s all about “content” rather than quality.
    The following 2 galleries are nothing shot of embarrassing although I’m sure the digital team are very happy about “engagement.”

    http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/bank-holiday-sunshine-your-photos-8989278

    http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/birmingham-sunset—here-your-8987521

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  • April 7, 2015 at 11:31 am
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    Scoop: UGC is all very wel but the crazy new style bosses really expect people to pay for rubbishy amateur phone pics in their papers!! they are deluded.
    Also the NUJ where I am from stood by helpess and toothless as a raft of photographers were made redundant. After that I resigned from NUJ. It really was Horse and Bolted. useless union!!

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  • April 7, 2015 at 12:28 pm
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    I wonder if there is another industry that thinks that by making the product worse then sales will improve? I’m going to start selling blank sheets of paper with a pencil attached and ask ‘readers’ to write whatever they like on it. UGC?

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  • April 7, 2015 at 1:14 pm
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    It is important to acknowledge that quality in papers is not important in the business plan of paper firms. The now game and the end game is websites. If the public are dumb enough to accept poor photos and writing the bosses will take it. If not, they do not worry about falling sales because eventually justifies closing papers or offices. A sad scenario for those unlucky enough to be proud journos.

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  • April 7, 2015 at 2:43 pm
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    I took extrinity’s advice and looked at those Birmingham galleries. The little girl cut off at the knees sums up 95% of family snaps – and there’s little wrong with this in itself. But family snaps once stayed in family albums or lay forgotten in family drawers and were not plastered over professional media sites. That these days they are sums up everything that has gone wrong with local journalism..

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  • April 7, 2015 at 3:23 pm
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    extrinity – I’ve looked at the Sunset Gallery and can’t see what’s wrong with it – especially the one with the time code plastered across the middle.

    If you look at some of the so-called ‘greatest news photos of all time’ they are nothing special. Those Capa snaps in the bullet spattered waves on Omaha Beach are all blurry and the one of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot at the police station – they didn’t give the guy the chance to adopt a pose, you know hand on hip and lips all pouty!

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  • April 7, 2015 at 4:51 pm
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    I have to post this again because it really is hilarious; this is the future of your local newspaper; http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/bank-holiday-sunshine-your-photos-8989278

    If it doesn’t happen on twitter/facebook, then your local newspaper will never know it happened.

    The problem is the reporting staff, they are not inclined anymore to book a photographer. They want their news ready written and with a picture attached. Easy. I worked at a newspaper where this was the case, and the photographers were knocking around the office too much. Chop, chop – chopped.

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  • April 7, 2015 at 4:59 pm
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    Chris @NUJ –
    I speak from first-hand experience.
    You weren’t the one who got the boot, along with 19 others with not so much as a squeak from the NUJ. You weren’t the one who had to stand by and watch the axe swing through department after department, destroying moral and making people fear for their jobs, whilst the NUJ said and did nothing!
    The NUJ’s approach was one of silence, cowardice, failing to stand up for their members when it REALLY mattered, and trying to making waves when it was all too bloody late.
    A union is supposed to have their member’s interests at heart. With the NUJ it’s an after thought.
    You should be ashamed of yourselves!

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  • April 7, 2015 at 5:09 pm
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    I don’t know what’s more depressing – the concerted attack on yet another newspaper journalism sector or the union-bashing comments posted here in response! Maybe the NUJ won’t be able to stem the flow of photographers being replaced, but I’d rather be in there trying to make a difference than just sitting on the side-lines making barbed criticisms.

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  • April 7, 2015 at 9:06 pm
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    Most of the guys and girls in newspaper management have worked their way up from either advertising or circulation plus a few from editorial.
    They were probably good at selling ads and getting the papers around the area but ‘managing’ is a completely different skill, and most I’m afraid to say are not that good at it.
    Otherwise they would be off into an industry where the stresses are about making profits not redundancies.
    So step into their shoes for a minute, fellow management colleagues at other publishing groups make photogs redundant (easy target).
    You are on a very good wage, family to feed, nice car, mortgage etc. Would you risk going against the tide to keep a few ‘low life photogs’ in a job?
    Far easier to go with the flow and make them redundant.
    After all, you have the perfect argument ‘everyone else is doing it’.
    Until one of these managers has the balls to say, NO, lets invest, quality images, quality copy, I believe in my workforce.
    Lets get the court copy and council meeting etc off the loss making website which will then give the public no alternative to buy our product.
    Lets buck the trend, give the customer quality, something they cannot get anywhere else……then the industry will still decline because the managers are too concerned looking after their wage instead of doing what is best for the company that hired them!

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  • April 7, 2015 at 11:06 pm
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    In my paper NUJ stood by as a photographic colleague in the union fought and lost his job. The union instead fought for journalists to get moved up pay structure in recognition of all the new multi media they would have to do. Since then have lost a photographer every 18 months while journalists took the cash but don’t leave the office to shoot stills or video, that’s left to remaining photographers to shoot endless galleries and videos.
    Lost all faith in NUJ

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  • April 8, 2015 at 12:44 pm
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    Former regional hack –
    The NUJ deserve ever ounce of my criticism.

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  • April 8, 2015 at 5:39 pm
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    I remember the day when our local weekly photographers in Lancashire refused to take pics for advertising features claiming they were employed as news photographers only.
    The NUJ was somewhat stronger than it is today, but unfortunately that tended to make many snappers institutionalised (in other words lazy).
    Much of their work was repetitive. They received the same wage every week whether they took 15 pics or 50 so many of the older ones tended to see it in their interest to take as few pics as possible.
    Also, many of these characters used the newspaper company’ s facilities and equipment to do private photographic jobs for advertisers and others. No wonder many of them stayed in the same job for decade after decade!
    The union pushed for graduate entry only into journalism, which in turn pushed the pay scales up so that journalists priced themselves out of a job just like police, nurses, and teachers are doing today.
    I am not anti union as my outfit enabled me to receive much enhanced redundancy when I got the chop, but many of these comments on HTFP are very naive.

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  • April 9, 2015 at 7:58 am
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    Like many things, if it looks easy it rarely is, which is why snappers have been binned off across the country. Or more to the point, they have been binned off from the weekly titles and the few left are now working for the flagship (usually daily).
    That in itself shows some do still recognise the necessity for professional pics, it’s just that the power-hungry execs have decided that these would be wasted on weekly readers.
    Shame really, because for years it was those very same weeklies which kept the daily titles afloat when they were losing readers hand over fist. Now both the dailies and weeklies are losing readers. Shows there’s no gratitude left in the business – shame because the industry once had a heart.

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