Want to work for a newspaper?

So is most of the rest of the midwest apparently, Kathy - it's about the same where I live.

Hmm, I could help support your comment if I could find the picture I took of a couple of Chicago fans with wolves on their heads... or wait, does that make me nuts for taking their picture?
 
The joking side of me immediately said "I knew it. This is all because the CEO of Flickr said there is no such thing as professional photographer anymore."

On the serious side, newspapers in general are on VERY hard times.

There's a statistic that says that if you are 60 years or older, then you WANT your news delivered to you in a newspaper and preferably at your doorstep every day.
If you are between 40 and 60 then you may or may not read the paper. You probably did, but you may have adapted to modern ways to get the news.
If you are less than 40 years old, then you can't imagine why anyone would use such an antiquated method to get the news as a newspaper.

And of course each year that timeline shifts up. So it's just a matter of time before newspapers are completely extinct.

I have a nephew who is a journalist and a brother-in-law who works the presses. Both have been hit. The one who works the presses was laid off from his job in the printing room. The paper no longer prints their own editions. There's some small paper with a printing room in the middle of the state and they print the editions for a lot of newspapers in the area. Most papers no longer print their own newspapers. The nephew who is the journalist worked for what USED to be the largest newspaper in the city. They're now a shadow of what they once were.

It's tragic, but I suspect this is the new norm.
 
As a photojournalist, I hope it backfires completely and respectable freelancers refuse to take their jobs for the pennies they are sure to be paying.

But this is the real world and the paper will surely continue to struggle financially and 20 people will remain jobless.

I agree 100%, however as we both know, the quality of photos that newspapers will use can be mediocre at best, and the reading public won't know the difference and won't really care.
 
Honestly I feel bad for those affected but the people who run papers are to blame.

I used to work for a company the did VHS and cassette duplication. In the 80s and 90s they were king of the hill. As the 2000's rolled around and DVDs became the norm business started to decline rapidly. Why? Because the people in charge failed to adapt to the changing market place. Call it fear, stubbornness, or ineptitude but the company finally when under and dozens lost their jobs, including me.

So don't blame the consumers or the market, blames those who do not adapt.
 
There is no such thing as job security anymore, doesn't matter what career field you're in, or how good you may be.
Huh???

Of course there is. You just need to be in a field that currently is very relevant and will be for some time in the future.

Domestic fastest growing and most stable industries at the moment in the United States:

1) Anything related to care for the elderly, as baby boomers all retire. Home health services, etc.
2) Building contractors, especially residential, subdivisions, HVACs, and related
3) Industrial manufacturing
4) Software and computer design
5) Medical anything, especially mental health and rehab, but with the exception of nursing.

All of those are currently especially relevant and fastest growing, and will be quite relevant and needed for 20 years or more, no problem. They are also very difficult to export to other countries, etc. Chinese companies can't build houses in the United States from China. You have to be here to build a house here. You have to be here to take care of an elderly person here (or any other medical needs). And industrial manufacturing in particular is something the US excels at (and shipping costs for heavy machinery are a factor)



I'm not sure why you would be under the assumption that job security IN GENERAL is any more or less than it has ever been for the last 75 years or so...

As a photojournalist, I hope it backfires completely and respectable freelancers refuse to take their jobs for the pennies they are sure to be paying.
They're probably still paying the same rates for photos as before. The difference is not paying health insurance and other similar benefits.

You're living in a rose coloured dream world. Especially when it comes to photography. You really think that a newspaper that has just cut an entire staff is going to be paying top dollar to freelancers? My guess they'll be paying photo students minimum wage to cover stories, this isn't the first paper that has cut staff. I know what the papers are already paying a lot of the freelancers in my home town, and it's not enough to live on, even if they were working everyday.

As for the rest, well there are a lot more out of country workers and more moving into the US everyday, and they are building houses, and taking skilled labour jobs and they don't mind lower wages than your good old American workers.
 
You're living in a rose coloured dream world. Especially when it comes to photography. You really think that a newspaper that has just cut an entire staff is going to be paying top dollar to freelancers? My guess they'll be paying photo students minimum wage to cover stories, this isn't the first paper that has cut staff. I know what the papers are already paying a lot of the freelancers in my home town, and it's not enough to live on, even if they were working everyday.
Fair enough. I know some businesses that lay people off nowadays merely to avoid the benefits, but not affecting wages.

I guess photography might not be one of those, based on your experience. It does make sense that with the glut of well-equipped amateurs who can take at least competent photos that this might be the case, yes.

As for the rest, well there are a lot more out of country workers and more moving into the US everyday, and they are building houses, and taking skilled labour jobs and they don't mind lower wages than your good old American workers.
So in other words, you have the right to receive higher wages for doing the exact same work in the exact same location than somebody else... because.... why? Because you just don't happen to feel like accepting less? Lolwut?

If some business fired you and then hired people illegally for lower than minimum wage, then that's not okay. And if so, you can sue them for it, and quite possibly make a lot of money.

However, if a business fired (a hypothetical) you and then hired some Mexican guy who is working legally for a legal wage, but one that just happens to be lower than yours was, then that is capitalism working exactly how it is supposed to work. That's not "lack of job security" any more than demanding 1,000,000 dollars for pizza delivery and getting fired is a "lack of job security."

That's simply "you demanding too much money for your work." Go back to your employer and offer to do the job for even less than the other guy, and they will probably hire you back again.
 
As a photojournalist, I hope it backfires completely and respectable freelancers refuse to take their jobs for the pennies they are sure to be paying.
As a graphic designer, I hoped this too. How many people use 99designs.com or similar? We're all "it's good enough" unless it's our field.
 
<editorial mode on>

Reduced costs = larger profits. That's the way business in this country has been conducted for the last 30-40 years. The philosophy of "Make it better than the competitors product" died at the same time. Instead of marketing people at the helm of corporate America, it's the bean counters more interested in todays profits than tommorrows new products.

<editorial mode off>
 
4) Software and computer design

Freelancer , Outsourcing Same Difference.

We went through and still experiencing the same. The layoffs that hit initially were not measured in 10's of employees but in 100's and in my case 1000's. I survived by doing the jobs that no one else wanted to do and do it better than anyone else who tried. This often meant settling on lower pay simply for the experience and backfilling with a second job. Ten years later finally back to where I left off career wise but the landscape has changed.... more work with less people...pay is kept low in lieu of the perception of stability. It could be a lot worse.... earnings havent stopped.. learning still.. and working one job. Stability is not but who has it these days? My next step.... earnings outside of simply a salary.

What previous generations taught us about School leads to Work leads to Retirement... make it better and it will sell... none of this applies any longer. Its all about investment in the right places and competing in the marketplace.

Is time and effort in photography still a good investment to compete in the job market? I decided it wasn't back in college....

PS. Medical is so screwed up here in the US. Attaching it to an employment simply shifted the problem to employees' ability to compete in said marketplace.
 
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<editorial mode on>

Reduced costs = larger profits. That's the way business in this country has been conducted for the last 30-40 years. The philosophy of "Make it better than the competitors product" died at the same time. Instead of marketing people at the helm of corporate America, it's the bean counters more interested in todays profits than tommorrows new products.

<editorial mode off>
Oh come now. That's the way business in this country has been conducted for longer than we have BEEN a country (at least 500 years).
Reduced costs = larger profits is a simple arithmetic truth at the core of any capitalist or mercantile system.

"Make the best product" is a strategy that some few companies at any given time can use, but not all. That philosophy only really makes sense usually for high end luxury goods companies. For anybody not making luxury goods, price is a factor, and "make the best product" doesn't make sense anymore, because the best product wouldn't be affordable to the target clientele. Instead it becomes "make a good enough product that clients will buy, for the lowest price" This was just as true in 1653 AD as it is today.

The Sun Times is an example of a low to mid range newspaper, that absolutely does NOT provide a luxury product. They provide an affordable, budget product, with lots of AP stories off the wire, simpler writing, less editorial quality IMO and less investigative reporting than many other newspapers. On purpose, to keep costs down. If they didn't keep those costs down, their clientele couldn't afford their newspaper.

When it comes to photojournalism, the only people who can really always be expected to afford fancy dedicated professional photographers are, again, the luxury companies. Things like National Geographic, which definitely does aim for "make the best product," because they are marketing to rich, hoity toity well educated people who are perfectly willing to pay however many more dollars are needed to get the absolute best content possible.




As high quality cameras become more affordable, and it becomes easier for people to get practice by shooting more cheaply and getting instant feedback, etc., freelance photography becomes a more acceptable cost to cut. So you should expect places like the Sun Times to cut those costs as soon as the pool of freelancers becomes skilled enough to sustain their needs. Later, perhaps, higher end newspapers like the Tribune probably will, too, if the pool of skill and equipment gets even bigger. National Geographic probably never would (there's never going to be a readily available pool of amateurs with 40+ years of experience and personal helicopters with 800mm lenses and enough free time to go on safari for 3 weeks in Myanmar at the drop of a hat)

Nothing's really change in terms of business practices. What has changed is the availability and nature of the technology.
 
I think we are all working for the same pages on how things are being affected, not just in North America but worldwide. This has been going on for decades, but now as the bigger companies are always looking to merge or swallow up the smaller companies the only ones that really take the hit are the staff. Cutting the negotiated benefits is the result of take overs. As a freelancer I am now taking on jobs that I may not have looked at years ago, but better I get the money than some pretender. I am still as good a photographer as I always have been, my skills haven't changed, I still work just as hard, and harder than I used to just to get the jobs and keep them. I work longer hours for less, simply because I have to. A few years ago I was talking to a local paper about picking up some assignments from them, the staff used to be eight really skilled photographers, it's down to three now, and they don't use freelancers anymore. I was told "what we pay would embarrass you, so we would rather not do that" There freelance rate $85 for a single shoot, or an 8 hour day, I wasn't embarrassed, I was shocked. The reason they could get away with this was that the editors were using photo students that would do it for free, pictures looked like crap, but no one cared. The staff guys would produce the same quality that they always had, but never worked any harder than they did before, the paper in affect lacked any kind of quality, and it didn't matter.

The employment world is changing, and yes some areas will have more security than others, but complete security along the lines of, "I can't be replaced because I am so good they really need me" These are the people that struggle the most when the boss says we have to make some changes, thanks for helping build our company but we can get two people for your salary, and they will do four jobs.
 
There is no such thing as job security anymore, doesn't matter what career field you're in, or how good you may be.
Huh???

Of course there is. You just need to be in a field that currently is very relevant and will be for some time in the future.

Domestic fastest growing and most stable industries at the moment in the United States:

1) Anything related to care for the elderly, as baby boomers all retire. Home health services, etc.
2) Building contractors, especially residential, subdivisions, HVACs, and related
3) Industrial manufacturing
4) Software and computer design
5) Medical anything, especially mental health and rehab, but with the exception of nursing.

All of those are currently especially relevant and fastest growing, and will be quite relevant and needed for 20 years or more, no problem. They are also very difficult to export to other countries, etc. Chinese companies can't build houses in the United States from China. You have to be here to build a house here. You have to be here to take care of an elderly person here (or any other medical needs). And industrial manufacturing in particular is something the US excels at (and shipping costs for heavy machinery are a factor)



I'm not sure why you would be under the assumption that job security IN GENERAL is any more or less than it has ever been for the last 75 years or so...

As a photojournalist, I hope it backfires completely and respectable freelancers refuse to take their jobs for the pennies they are sure to be paying.
They're probably still paying the same rates for photos as before. The difference is not paying health insurance and other similar benefits.
The field of nursing is as strong as ever, and in fact will be growing even stronger with Obamacare because more people will have access to healthcare.
 

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