Why replacing newspaper photographers with iPhones may not have been the best idea
At the beginning of June the Chicago Sun-Times fired its entire photography staff. Their reasoning?
Well, all the reporters now have iPhones, and therefore they can shoot photos to accompany stories. Ignoring for a moment what this says about the Sun-Times' view of the photojournalists, how is that working out for the paper? Has there been a noticeable drop in the quality of their reporting or the images used to illustrate stories?
A new Tumblr has been set up to help answer those questions. SunTimes/DarkTimes collects examples of how the paper's coverage has changed since the switch over to iPhone pictures taken by untrained photographers. It's worth heading over and getting a look at how startling the difference is. We've included one example below that should strike particularly close to the hearts of Chicago Blackhawks fans.
The first image is the Sun-Time's cover page following the Blackhawks' win of the Stanley Cup. The second is the cover page from their competition at the Chicago Tribune. We're big fans of the iPhone here at TUAW, but it's no substitute for a trained and experienced newspaper photographer.
[via Daring Fireball]
