Tero Kuittinen over at BGR.com thinks the iPhone is the primary culprit in last week’s stunning layoffs of the entire Chicago Sun-Times photography pool.
This is because, as he puts it, “Smartphones have been forecast to undercut newspaper photography professionals for years,” and “the Sun-Times‘ managing editor (Craig Newman) mentions ‘iPhone photography basics’ as one of the mandatory training session (sic) for journalists.”
As Kuittinen rightly points out, convergence has long been on the lips of newspaper higher-ups as they struggle not only to adapt to the new digital paradigm, but to simply survive. Unfortunately, he seems to want to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the iPhone, due to the fact that its newer models boast sensors “between 8 and 13 megapixels” and “HD video.”
Kuittinen mentions the unfortunate fact that the Sun-Times saw a drop in circulation of about eight percent during the last two quarters. He mentions the fact that newsrooms are consolidating jobs and eliminating positions editors think can be done adequately by reporters. But this has nearly nothing to do with the problem at hand — Apple is killing photojournalism!
No it isn’t. Apple simply provided a multimedia tool to the general public that turned out to be slightly better than average. What’s killing photojournalism — and probably journalism in general — is the fact that newspapers want the same flexibility and agility as bloggers or websites, they want the ability to break news quicker than their broadcast counterparts and Joe Rubberneck combined.
But here’s the thing. Even the iPhone 5′s camera is too basic to be adequate for print publication in any meaningful sense. The kind of photos that can be taken on a phone versus the kind of photos that can be produced by a high-end DSLR are miles apart. This was a cost-cutting move. And it’s one that will bite the Sun-Times — and anyone thinking about repeating their mistake — on the rear.