MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Recently the Pew Research Center reported that between the years 2000 to 2012 there has been a 43% reduction in the number of newspaper photographers. In May of last year, the Chicago Sun-Times fired its entire 28-person photo staff. In October, the upstate New York newspaper, the Times-Herald Record, laid off its last four staff photographers due to “economic realities” and “new technologies.” These are just a few of the cutbacks affecting professional photojournalists across the country. Significantly, the downsizing is not confined to the U.S. Last November the UK’s Johnston Press laid off 24 photojournalists referring to them as “redundant.”

Some scholars and pundits are speculating that we are witnessing the demise of the field of photojournalism as more reporters are expected to produce iPhone photos and as newspapers cut costs by outsourcing assignments to citizen journalists who are often unpaid and have no expectation of benefits.
Others disagree, arguing that the layoffs are part of industry-wide cutbacks in an age of declining circulation and because of the newspaper industry’s inability to monetize online advertising. Pointing to continuing layoffs of reporters and editors, they contend that the high costs of photo departments are the reason for such severe photo staff reductions. They argue that citizen journalists rarely contribute news photos other than those of occasional spot news events they happened to witness, and that professional photojournalists with professional equipment are a necessity for restricted-access situations such as press conferences, sporting events and war coverage. While it is not possible to definitively chart the future course of professional photojournalism, this paper will describe the context for the layoffs and analyze the arguments that are predicting the potential trajectories of the field.