《芝加哥太阳报》淘汰摄影师真相

    专业新闻摄影师所掌握的高超技能不仅仅是技术意义上的（这就是为什么他们的照片比记者随便用拇指点击iPhone手机抓拍的照片不知道要好多少倍的原因所在），他们还非常善于站位，让自己处于可以拍摄出好作品的位置上。他们认识警察和消防队员，市长的公关团队，还有音乐会和比赛现场的管理人员。就像记者一样，他们善于利用自己的消息源，知道怎样让新闻现场的官员们抬起黄色带子，放他们进去。

    《芝加哥论坛报》（Chicago Tribune）摄影记者亚历克斯•加西亚就这起裁员事件发表了一篇言辞刻薄的博文，反问《太阳时报》管理层，你们怎么会认为“把专业摄影师从你们的新闻团队中剔除出去会有助于你们提供受众想要的产品呢？”

    破坏工会，或许是一个原因。这家公司在最近一次劳资谈判中并没有提及可能出现的大规模裁员。加西亚怀疑，《太阳报》的如意算盘是，先正式取消摄影师岗位，然后再在“几个月后”宣布此次裁员是一个错误，然后雇用新员工。“这一次，它们是非常不同的岗位——几乎没有什么福利可言的兼职工作，”加西亚写道。

    当然，所有这些都是猜测。另一种可能性是：这家公司正在丧失的资金超出了预期。但它又引出一个问题：这家去年被投资公司Wrapports LLC收购的报业集团去年为什么掏出近300万美元，收购了陷入困境的《芝加哥读者周刊》（Chicago Reader ）？最近为什么还打算从论坛公司（Tribune Company）的债权人所有者手中购买资产？

    不过，无论怎样，此举都是“管理层的败笔，而不是什么聪明的权谋之术”，加西亚说。这样做短期内或许将节省数百万资金，但与此同时，它揭示出太阳时报公司对读者群“赤裸裸的无视”。通过摈弃摄影师们“对读者群所处社区的深厚了解，联系和信任，《太阳报》向读者发出了这样的信号：这份报纸才不关心他们。死亡螺旋由此启动。”

    没错，死亡螺旋。十多年来，对报纸的命运忧心忡忡的人们一直声称，报社不能依靠裁员促进业绩增长。是的，从过去补贴它的内容（漫画，咨询栏目和分类广告等）中分拆新闻，互联网对报纸构成了有可能涉及生死存亡的威胁。但降低报纸的质量似乎不像是一个明智的应对之举。

    这并不是《太阳报》迈向平庸的第一个昏招。尽管名人新闻在互联网上大行其道，但Wrapports公司去年依然聘请了一堆名人为它的产品（一个名为“Splash”的肤浅之至的网络和印刷杂志）撰稿。这些名人包括低级情景喜剧明星吉姆•贝鲁西、说唱歌手卢普•菲亚斯科和阴谋理论家珍妮•麦卡锡。后者一直坚持认为疫苗导致自闭症，这种说法已受到强有力的驳斥，早已名誉扫地。这份出版物每24个小时推出一篇“每日珍妮”（Daily Jenny）专栏文章。就在这些人被《太阳报》奉为座上宾之际，以前曾经效力于这份报纸的记者们正坐在失业办公室的塑料椅子上；在Wrapports公司关闭本地新闻编辑部之后，这家报业公司旗下40家郊区报的记者和编辑们正被迫返回市中心；越来越多的芝加哥新闻无人问津，无人报道。（财富中文网）

    译者：任文科

    Professional news photographers are not only highly skilled in a technical sense (which is why their photos are so much better than what can be snapped on an iPhone by a ten-thumbed reporter), but they're also highly skilled at getting themselves into positions where they can take great pictures. They know the cops and firefighters, the mayor's public-relations staff, and the management staffs at music and sporting venues. They work their sources just like reporters do, and they know how to get officials on the scene to lift the yellow tape and let them in.

    Alex Garcia, a photojournalist at the rival Chicago Tribune, in his acid blog post about the layoffs, rhetorically asked the Sun-Times management how it could possibly think it could "deliver a product people would want by gutting the visual professionals from your news organization."

    Union-busting, perhaps. The company didn't mention possible mass layoffs during its most recent labor negotiations. Garcia wonders whether the strategy is to formally eliminate the positions of the photographers and then, "months from now," announce that the layoffs were a mistake, and hire new staffers. "This time they're very different positions -- part-time positions, with little if any benefits," Garcia wrote.

    All speculation, of course. Another possibility: The company is losing more money than it had expected. But that raises the question of why the company -- acquired last year by the investment firm Wrapports LLC -- shelled out nearly $3 million to buy the troubled alt-weekly the Chicago Reader last year and why it was recently mulling buying assets from the Tribune Company's creditor-owners.

    No matter what, though, Garcia says the move is "bad management and not smart Machiavellian management." The move will save millions in the short run, but in the meantime it reveals the Sun-Times company's "naked disregard" for its readers. By eliminating the photographers' "deep knowledge, connection and trust to their communities, the Sun-Times has signaled to its readership that it doesn't really care. And so begins the death spiral."

    Yes, death spiral. People worried about the fate of newspapers have been arguing for more than a decade that you can't cut your way to growth. Yes, the Internet, by unbundling news from the stuff that used to subsidize it (comics, advice columns, classified ads, etc.) poses a possibly existential threat to newspapers. But making your product worse doesn't seem like a sensible response to the challenge.

    And this isn't the first move toward the mediocre by the Sun-Times. Despite the fact that the Internet is rife with celebrity news, Wrapports last year hired a bunch of celebrities to write for its "Splash" product -- a web and print magazine that's about as shallow as it gets. The celebs included Jim Belushi, star of sub-par sitcoms; rapper Lupe Fiasco; and conspiracy theorist Jenny McCarthy, whose insistence that vaccines cause autism has been solidly discredited. The publication offers a "Daily Jenny" column every 24 hours. These people were brought on board even as former Sun-Times journalists were sitting in plastic chairs at the unemployment office, as reporters and editors at Wrapports' 40 suburban papers were being forced to commute downtown after the company closed their local newsrooms, and as more and more news was going uncovered in Chicago.