Six photographer and picture desk roles are set to be axed at a regional daily and its sister weeklies as a spate of redundancies continues at regional publisher Newsquest.
The Swindon Advertiser, Wiltshire Gazette and Herald and Wiltshire Times are set to reduce the number of staff photographers from six to two.
Other roles at risk of redundancy include those of the picture editor and the picture desk assistant.
The move follows a series of photographic cutbacks at other Newsquest papers in recent months, with the group reducing the number of staff photographers and increasing the use of freelances.
In February, it was announced that two picture desk roles would be axed at the Southern Daily Echo to be replaced by a user generated content editor role.
Last December, it was revealed that Northern Echo chief photographer Richard Doughty and his deputy Andy Lamb had left the title as part of a review across Newsquest’s North East and Yorkshire titles.
The review also saw photographers at weekly sister titles the Keighley News and Craven Herald, Bob Smith and Steve Garnett, made redundant.
And York daily The Press axed the role of picture editor and reduced the number of staff photographers from four to three.
Further cuts at the end of last year saw photographic staff at Newsquest’s North London titles reduced from six to three and job cuts at the Worcester News and its sister weeklies saw four photographer jobs, one full-time and three part-time, reduced to one full time equivalent.
Gary Lawrence, group editor at the Wiltshire titles, said he could not comment on the latest proposals.
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Photographers are getting as much of a kicking as subs. Will there be anyone left to actually produce papers by the year’s end? Or is the idea that the readers do it all? Prepare for those timeless shots of lampposts growing from people’s heads and sports without the ball.
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RIP Wiltshire Times, Swindon Advertiser, Wiltshire Gazette..
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Applied for a job at the Wiltshire Times many years ago. Seemed like a pretty decent outfit back then. Bad luck guys.
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Some ex staff photographers are keeping Newsquest going by continuing to submit work to the desk for nothing, making the photographers who have survived the cuts also in a very precarious place, just so they can continue with some kind of identity, very sad state of affairs, a dream come true for Newquest though.
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Newsquest has no credible plan to move forward in a post-print world, other than slashing its wages bill by getting rid of the people who provide the content that is their product. How is making a product poorer supposed to help any company?
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Reading HTFP these days is like being in the British Admiralty war room in 1940.
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It seems that photographers have joined sub-editors on the World Wildlife Fund’s list of endangered species. The major regional players have obviously decided that the newspaper photographer’s work can easily be replaced by “User Generated Content” and a handful of poorly rewarded freelances. After all, it costs next to nothing and the punters flocking to the regional press web sites are well used to the dreadful results issuing from mobile phones across Facebook et al. They will never miss the dinosaur snappers,will they?
Perhaps they will,perhaps they won’t, but it misses the point. In the headlong rush for profit and the overwhelming necessity to discover a model that can support a world without print, the regional press is only adding fuel to the argument that it is an industry the great British public can well do without.
Good newspaper photography is a little like good newspaper design – you never notice it until it has gone.
That is why many people, like me, I guess are tucking the money they spent on a regional in their back pocked, adding a few pennies and buying a national instead. At least their pictures are in focus.
Of course the golden days are gone forever, they can never return. But faced with regional journalism’s greatest crisis, all the powers that be can come up with is a policy of slash and burn.
It may take a while, but as things are going, the flames will be licking the boardroom doors?
That’s a snap I look forward to taking on my I phone. Alas, I suspect that by then, content editors will be on that WWF’s endangered list, too.
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Sutler: the flames may well soon lick at the boardroom but by then its occupants will be long gone, with the loot, having legged it down the crafty fire escape at the back. They will then turn their attention to another “industry”, with ne’er a backward look at the smouldering ruins they have left behind.
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It’s so sad. In 40 years we’ve gone from good photographs, ruined by poor wire technology & printing, through this short, golden age of glorious colour quality aided by modern printing – a period when it was truly a joy to be a page designer – back to crap photographs which cannot be saved however good the hardware is. All because modern managements have no clue as to the value of a good editorial product.
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The writing has been on the wall for some time. Even though the Adver’s photographic department has been living with the shadow of the executioner’s axe over their heads for a considerable time, it doesn’t really lessen the blow. They have consistently produced good pictures over many years, serving a six times a week morning paper and the weeklies. Their reward is no less harsh for its inevitability. In a perverse way perhaps Gary Lawrence’s silence is to be admired. Is there an outside chance that even he can’t bring himself to spout the usual management platitudes that are trotted out at times like this?
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“Good newspaper photography is a little like good newspaper design – you never notice it until it has gone.”
Well said, sutler, Cheshire. You have only to look at the picture content of the Manchester Evening News since they axed by email their real pro photographers. What a ghastly daily collection of images that are a disgrace to a newspaper that once prided itself as the best regional in Britain. With a few exceptions its journalism has gone the same way with few writers of any distinction or authority. Sorry, but in the new world of Manchester at the centre of the so-called Northern Powerhouse, the MEN has taken a nosedive into obscurity.
Sad but in five years I doubt it will exist in its printed form given the decline in circulation.
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Very sad news for those involved.
I’ve been reading these Wiltshire newspapers since the 1960s – a time when the Wiltshire Times was still owned and edited by the Lansdown family. During the past half century the hallmark of these titles (and the Salisbury Journal) has been the quality of the photography. Time after time I have seen some of the dullest stories brought to life by talented snappers.
In recent years the photographers have also become the only representatives from weekly newspapers members of the public see out and about in the community. Such personal connections and contacts matter, even in the digital age, as not all stories can be gleaned from monitoring twitter and Facebook while advertising sales will also be hamstrung.
I don’t blame the big newspaper combines though as they are facing a tidal wave of social and technological changes greater than those which doomed the hand loom weavers two centuries ago. However I fear the existing model of big combines with big overheads and ever-looser local connections with the communities they try to cover will not long survive this decade.
In the 1980s, when I used to sit on a archive committee at County Hall alongside the Wiltshire Times’ last editor/owner Michael Lansdown I soon appreciated his depth of knowledge and passion for the local area. He was, of course, retired by then.
Had more newspapers survived as locally owned and run units, led by people of his calibre and commitment, then the local newspaper business might have a somewhat brighter future.
Alas not, these days what matters is short-termism and making a fast buck for the men in the City!
Those who leave Newsquest will soon find new roles. More likely than not they will be happier than before but for local communities the decline and fall of our local newspapers amounts to the removal of one of the important ties that bind a local community together.
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Managers have always seen new technology NOT as a way of improving the paper but as a way of cutting costs and staff. Hence the dreaded deadening Atex, templates, sterile regional news centres and crappy submitted pictures.
Modern digital technology is a golden opportunity for quality pictures. But only from professionals. The readers can tell you know, that’s why sales are still tumbling. But who cares?
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Used to love journalism and was half decent at it, interviewed some big names, was even up for an award once, yet am currently looking at retraining as an electrician. If that’s not a sad sign of the times I don’t know what is.
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Give a reporter an iPhone and give ad reps a cheap office camera and bingo,no need for photographers anymore , we never saw that one coming did we
Here at Archant you know It’s just a matter of time once they touted trading reader stories for a couple of comped cinema tickets, mind you no ones reading the dailies so no ones picked up the offer and supplied anything worth using,laughable if it wasn’t true
And it’s even worse now that they’re laughingly trying to pass the dire evening news off as a morning ‘metro’
So no surprises about the photographers situation
desperate times demand desperate measures
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in my travels I read a lot of local weeklies. Heavens know, they were never perfect but now, almost without exception, they look like and read like a bunch of amateurs threw them together, especially sports pages.
I think it is a mistake to believe readers do not notice shallow writing, poor grammar and dreadful pictures. But senior management does not agree. Otherwise they might give the professionals that do care (but do not have time to!) some more staff.
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Will the last skilled journalist, (photographer or reporter or sub, if any remain) please turn the lights out as you leave the building!
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Thanks for all the support and comments everybody. Will know whose stopping and who’s going in about a week.Meanwhile… anyone want a photographer out there!
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Sorry subs … meant Who’s not whose in previous.
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Now watch the circulations of these titles slide. Absolute dead cert and will have been massively underestimated by Newsquest. And of course Gary couldn’t comment, he probably doesn’t agree with it any more than the comments on here and just doing what he’s told. If I’m wrong, I’m sure he’ll come on this site and say so.
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