Reporters face unreasonable expectations after Sun-Times photo layoffs

By Andrew Gibson

There's a long list of reasons why the Chicago Sun-Times will likely suffer from laying off its entire photo staff. It won't have the varying perspectives that come from visual-first journalists. Morale in the newsroom will surely drop. And it won't have the crew that's come to learn the nuances of the city after years of experience. Look no further than John H. White, the 35-year Sun-Times veteran and Pulitzer Prize winner selected by the Environmental Protection Agency to photograph Chicago's African-American community in the 1970s.

But there's another problem: Quality inevitably suffers when journalists are forced to multitask on daily deadlines. And that's exactly what the Sun-Times is asking its reporters to do: be responsible, along with freelance photojournalists, for shooting professional-caliber photos when they're on assignment.

The Five Hardest Things About Journalism: No. 4

By Andrew Gibson

This is the second post in a series about what I think are the five most difficult parts of journalism. My opinions are based on one year at Mizzou in Columbia, Mo., and an internship this summer at KCNC-TV in Denver.

Starbucks Via was a good friend of mine last semester.

This was especially true when my News (Journalism 2100) instructor,Karon Speckman, assigned everyone in my class to cover a Columbia, Mo., City Council meeting.

It started at 7 p.m., so I figured I’d be done two hours later. That would leave me plenty of time to get a quote from someone in the audience, write a 400-word story and check my grammar before midnight, I thought.

Instead, I walked out of the meeting, which was still going on, around midnight with rings around my eyes, an audio recorder with maxed-out memory and a notebook with smeared, illegible notes.


“Welcome to the world of public meetings,” Speckman said in class the next day.


And welcome to reality, Andrew, because you want to be a political reporter someday.