When The Newspaper's Photographer...

Decides she's too busy to shoot.. the ONLY game in the area and between neighbor schools that the once a week paper covers

If that was in my backyard, I'd be ringing the photo editor every time I bumped into that writer and his P&S. Sounds like they're spread thin and need the contact info for a few stringers.

lol, that's hilarious and a shame all at the same time.

Same happens here in Australia where I live, the reason mainly being that they won't pay photographers half of anything that would be worth doing the job for (I worked for one for a year or so). The rely on "guys with cameras" supplying them with material for a credit.

It happens all the time with our local paper. Their cut backs are horrible, so a few writer will have a P&S.

They also love to do this for cross county, track and baseball/softball.

I wonder if that P&S has manual settings, or if shoots in Auto mode.

shd inform them about CHDK if they're using Canon P &S

Hehehe... but when you think about it... it's a weekly paper and unless that was the ONLY game that week, the editor may already have the photos needed. Of course, if the reporter is able to capture something good with his P&S, it might could be included. Even if it was the only game, sometimes they might have something to carry over from last week's games.

I shoot for a weekly paper that goes to print on Friday night. I may cover a game on Tuesday, a game on Thursday, and a game on Friday. Even though everyone makes deadline, the editor may choose to not run the Friday game until the next week. It's hardly news by then, but weekly papers tend to serve a different purpose than daily papers.

Also, sometimes the article may have stats about the game but the real story is about one of the players. If the newspaper already has a good photo of that particular player, there isn't really a need to send a photographer to cover the game. Things are tight in the industry. The paper I string for has 1 staff photographer and me, as far as I know. They other photos have to be done by the reporters, many with nothing more than a P&S. If they feel a story is going to be a lead story or if they want sports action shots, they send me or the other photographer.

This paper is every Thursday and the two schools rarely play each other in basketball, and are a co-op in both boys & girls hockey and some of the track & field sports so he was really trying to get the front page sports picture for this week.

The biggest paper in MN with a circulation of 600k came to me for a shot I took at the boxing event at the Target Center. When they discovered I actually want to get paid for my work, they used some BS stock photos for their story instead. Funny thing, they had their photographer on assignment there that night, too.

The Star Trib is cheap?? Oh wait..

Here's my take on things:

http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

SnapLocally.com wrote in post #9158676
Here's my take on things:

http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

I wish I'd seen that before.. a good laugh but also correct.. who wants to work for free? I did enough of that in the past.

If the newspaper readership likes the product from a P&S camera, then why wouldn't the newspaper cut costs? After all, newspapers are really going out of business all over the country.

Even now, readers write much of the content of local papers. Our daily paper allows readers to comment on every story and post photos for which none of the readers get paid. And readers have noticed that the comments are often more informed and factual than the original article by the journalist.


Furthermore, it won't be too long before P&S cameras have the same quality as the equipment we have now. Of course, we will have better equipment by then as well, but the reality is that newspapers won't need the quality that could be provided if no one is reading the newspapers anyways.

I ran into a guy at a bike race this summer. He was a former photographer for the Army starting way back in 'Nam and all he had was a P&S. I have to admit, his pix were pretty good!