Members of my profession need to embrace change

Some people really do need to move with the times. What makes me say this?

Well, up to 30 photographic jobs are at risk after my former employer Archant announced a restructure which will see reporters take pictures “as a matter of routine”.

The company says it wants to make it clear that all editorial staff should be able to take “publishable quality photographs and video” together with a “renewed focus” on images shared by readers.

Yep - things are constantly changing.

As you can imagine, this has created a storm of protest amongst journalists around the country.

But perhaps it is time for some (most?) of them to ditch their rose-tinted glasses, get real and stop living in the past.

When I started as a junior on my small town weekly newspaper it had an editor, a deputy editor, a chief sub, a sub, a chief reporter, a deputy chief reporter, three reporters, a sports editor, a sports reporter and four (yes, four) photographers. The same newspaper now has no office, no production people and no reporters in the town.

It made money in those days not because of Pulitzer-prize winning journalism every edition but because it had no real local competition.

Now times have moved on and local newspapers face competition from a myriad of sources. So, my fellow journos, I urge you to embrace the changes that are happening, and those that are still to come, and stop harking back to the good old days.

And remember that not all practices were good. It wasn’t that long ago that the evening and morning dailies at a company I worked for would send two photographers (one each) and two reporters (again, one each) to cover a premier league match involving the town’s team.

If it was a Saturday afternoon game and the daily snapper got a “great pic” it would not, as you might expect, be handed to the evening news desk for that day’s footie paper.

It would be hidden in a locked drawer so that the daily’s Monday edition could have the “exclusive”.

And at another paper I worked for the photographers spent most of their time playing darts in their palatial suite while waiting to be assigned jobs. Or spent hours locked away in the dark room processing films. Well, that’s what they said.

Paying people, no matter how qualified they are, to sit around doing nothing most of the day is wrong and makes no business sense.

The world’s a’changing, and fast, and we need to embrace the change – no matter how bitter the pill.