The bean counters and toads in the big corner offices,
pulling the strings and making the big bucks, have decided that wire service
photogs, freelancers and reporters with smart phones will be able to provide
all the images necessary for the publication. After all, they suggest in a
corporate statement, the Sun-Times is embracing the 21st Century and
developing its video capabilities.
I could offer up the obvious belief that newspapers, at
their best, are a euphonic blend of words and images; the first telling of
history and a way to capture each day’s events in a fashion that is
informative, entertaining and, occasionally, insightful and compelling.
To be sure, there still will be some decent photos, mostly
from decent freelancers and the wire services. But I’m guessing the Sun-Times
will also be publishing lots of snapshots, the stuff of community pages and
social media sites – grainy, unfocused, poorly lit and framed.
Worse, the paper will join the hundreds of other mediocre
sites filling the web, offering up lame video clips taken by harried and
overworked reporters attempting simply to go with the flow in a digital world
with an insatiable appetite.
I was lucky enough to be a reporter and editor during the
“golden era” of journalism, when the job was actually a noble career. I was
also lucky to be surrounded by professionals, men and women who took pride in
their work and the notion that they and their colleagues were “afflicting the
comfortable and comforting the afflicted”. In short, we were going about the
business of putting out a newspaper.
There’s a bit of that sort of work that remains. And I
salute the journalists – and their corporate bosses – who remain true to this
higher calling.
But, let’s be clear, the world is changing and newspapers
are being pulled along into the abyss. Truth to tell, I imagine some schnook 40
or so years ago was sharing these same sentiments as computers started
replacing typewriters; the same sort of feelings that several generations
earlier were offered up by composing room typesetters losing their jobs to
linotype operators.
The difference in then and now is that linotype machines
made newspapers and newspapering better; the same can be said about computers
and the impact such high-tech stuff had on the industry. Meanwhile, the downsizing
of newspaper editorial staffs – reporters, editors, designers, artists and
researchers – is a response to a world gone digital and has done nothing to
enhance the Fourth Estate.
This week’s announcement out of Chicago, I fear, is simply
one additional nail in the coffin of newspapering. I’m thinking soon the lid
will be secure and it’ll be time to lower the box into the ground. And so it
goes.
