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UK News Company The Latest To Ditch Photographers

Newspaper Company To Cut Photographers
By 

Deputy Media Editor, The Huffington Post

VENICE BEACH, CA - APRIL 16: Paparazzis stalk Lindsay Lohan during a visit with her lawyers on April 16, 2010 in Venice Beach, California. Several of them work for Francois Regis Navarre, who has revolutionized the way paparazzis track celebrities, and who is the owner of X17, one of the world's most successful paparazzi photo agency. Navarre came to the U.S from France in the 90's to be a mainstream newspaper correspondent. He free-lanced for prestigious Le Monde, but became fascinated by Hollywood and decided to become a paparazzi. After several huge scoops, including the first pictures of Michael Jackson's children, he founded X17, today one of the world's largest paparazzi photo agency. With his American wife Brandy, Navarre employs between 60 and 100 photographers and various tipsters (valet car employees, restaurant workers, limo drivers, and even street bums). Today, X17 generates 12 millions dollars a year. Navarre is credited with changing the ways paparazzi stalk their prey: he used video before it became trendy, assigned full time crews to specific neighborhoods or celebrities (15 people full time on Britney Spear, for example), and revolutionized how paparazzis work: 'I asked my paparazzis not to hide anymore, but instead to wait on the sidewalk with wide-angle and a flash', giving birth to the clusters of paparazzis following celebrities in the open. Navarre does not hide either: he lives in a luxury house in Pacific Palissades, an exclusive Los Angeles neighborhood prized by the very Hollywood stars he stalks. (Photo Gilles Mingason/Getty Images)
VENICE BEACH, CA - APRIL 16: Paparazzis stalk Lindsay Lohan during a visit with her lawyers on April 16, 2010 in Venice Beach, California. Several of them work for Francois Regis Navarre, who has revolutionized the way paparazzis track celebrities, and who is the owner of X17, one of the world's most successful paparazzi photo agency. Navarre came to the U.S from France in the 90's to be a mainstream newspaper correspondent. He free-lanced for prestigious Le Monde, but became fascinated by Hollywood and decided to become a paparazzi. After several huge scoops, including the first pictures of Michael Jackson's children, he founded X17, today one of the world's largest paparazzi photo agency. With his American wife Brandy, Navarre employs between 60 and 100 photographers and various tipsters (valet car employees, restaurant workers, limo drivers, and even street bums). Today, X17 generates 12 millions dollars a year. Navarre is credited with changing the ways paparazzi stalk their prey: he used video before it became trendy, assigned full time crews to specific neighborhoods or celebrities (15 people full time on Britney Spear, for example), and revolutionized how paparazzis work: 'I asked my paparazzis not to hide anymore, but instead to wait on the sidewalk with wide-angle and a flash', giving birth to the clusters of paparazzis following celebrities in the open. Navarre does not hide either: he lives in a luxury house in Pacific Palissades, an exclusive Los Angeles neighborhood prized by the very Hollywood stars he stalks. (Photo Gilles Mingason/Getty Images)

Photographers are taking another hard hit as the priorities of many print publications continue to change.

Johnston Press newspapers' Midlands publishing unit is saying goodbye to all photographers, HoldTheFrontPage reported Monday. The newspapers will begin using freelance photographers and reader-submitted photographs.

“All photographers will soon be leaving titles within the Midlands region following a review – at local level – of the way photographic content is generated," a spokeswoman for Johnston Press said.

While Johnston Press has not yet confirmed the exact number of photographers it will be cutting, the company had once estimated that 24 photographers could soon be on the outs, according to the National Union of Journalists.

The Guardian's Roy Greenslade commented that the general need for photographers today has dropped as smartphones and the popularity of taking pictures has increased dramatically.

"Relying on freelancers - and, of course, citizens with smartphones - to provide pictures is far cheaper than having photographers on staff," he wrote on Monday. "No event occurs - fires, fetes, road accidents, cats up trees, whatever - without someone being on hand to snap a picture. In the real sense of the word, newspaper photographers are therefore redundant."

Photographers have undoubtedly been hit the hardest by the fall of print publications in recent years. Photographers, along with artists and videographers, have lost 43% percent of all jobs in just over a decade. The Chicago Sun-Times announced in May that it was cutting its entire photography staff while the Atlanta Journal-Constitution plans to turn photographers into "multimedia visual journalists." In November, the french newspaper Libération tried to show readers the importance of photographers by omitting all photographs from its issue.

(h/t: Poynter)

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