In case you missed the news over the weekend. The Chicago Sun Times has layed off all of its full-time photographers.
Everything went down last Thursday and as the weekend progressed more and more details have come to light. The Sun Times claims the move is a shift to video because their audience is requiring video. They are shifting to free-lancers and having the reporters shoot video and photos. It came to light over the weekend that they were also training reporters to use iPhones capture, edit and upload video and photos.
This is not the first time something like this happened. In 2008, Newsday terminated its 20-person photography staff and then allowed them to reapply for new multimedia jobs. Of note is that Tim Knight, who’s now the publisher of the Sun-Times, was the publisher at Newsday when this happened.
It will be interesting to see where this goes. This will surely be a situation worth watching.