Let's see: Your job, or mine? Hmm ... guess the reader can stand a few typos and bad art.
Quote:
Third, photography is a sore subject where I work, at least to me. The newspaper laying off its entire photo staff leaves anyone who presumes to snap a photo afterward in an awkward position. Let's be clear. There is no replacement for professional photographers. They have the skills. They have the experience. They have the eye, the connections, the equipment. I'm just as upset as anybody else about what happened but, unlike the critics, I work there, so don't have the luxury of condemnation or mockery. I have to hope there's a larger purpose, that survival of the paper is at stake. And, frankly, on this blog it's a side issue, because this is unrelated to the newspaper. I'm taking these photos, not as a protest or statement, as my friend also suggested, but out of necessity, because I have no choice, and I'm trying to do a good job because I want them to be interesting -- I like patterns, juxtapositions, curious images. Readers also like pictures, I believe, they help the words go down, and I'm hoping to create a blog that readers like. I would prefer to have an entire a team of professional photographers working for union wages at my disposal, just as I would love a union copy desk plucking out my frequent typos and misspellings. But I don't. This is a one-man show.
[
Neil Steinberg of the Sun-Times]