-By Warner Todd Huston
In yet another example of the retrenching in the national media landscape, the Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff and plans to replace them with freelancers.
Chicago radio reports say that the Sun-Times intends to “focus on video” instead of still photography.
The Chicago Tribune reports that its rival laid off 20 full-time staffers and posted a statement from the Times
The Sun-Times business is changing rapidly and our audiences are consistently seeking more video content with their news. We have made great progress in meeting this demand and are focused on bolstering our reporting capabilities with video and other multimedia elements. The Chicago Sun-Times continues to evolve with our digitally savvy customers, and as a result, we have had to restructure the way we manage multimedia, including photography, across the network.
Erika Enigk Grotto, the spouse of one laid-off Times photographer said that her husband was told that reporters will now be tasked with using their own cell phones to take photos to accompany articles.
The @suntimes laid off the company’s entire photo staff this morning. Reporters will be shooting with their phones. Solid business decision.
— Erika Enigk Grotto (@Bewarika) May 30, 2013
The Chicago Sun-Times has been cutting deep into its budget for some time.
In a strike of bitter irony, on the same day the paper announced it was firing all its photographers, the Sun-Times printed the obituary of its long-time chief photographer Bob Kotalik.
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Chicago Sun-Times Lays Off Entire Photo Staff”
The New York Times is exasperated with the lack of progress in Congress of “fixes” to the massive and far reaching Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. This exasperation has evinced itself in an odd way as the Times seems to be expressing sympathy for lobbyists and businesses trying to make changes to the law.
In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, senior Illinois Senator, Democrat Dick Durbin, expressed his doubt as to whether bloggers deserved Constitutional protection for their work online.
During the May 22 broadcast of National Public Radio’s “
By all accounts the Interstate 5 bridge collapse in Washington State was a result of an over sized truck load as opposed to “failing infrastructure.” But a plea for greater federal spending figured prominently in many reports on the accident nonetheless.
There has been much speculation in the media on why Obama’s current scandal of the IRS targeting conservative groups for attack didn’t come out last year when the initial flurry of reportage on the incident was seen. Well, The New York Times thinks it has the answer: it was Rush Limbaugh’s fault.
The intrepid Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News has been one of the few reporters attempting to dig deep into controversial stories–and by controversial we mean stories that Obama would rather see go away. But after her work on Fast & Furious and Benghazi, she is now reporting that she’s been shut out of the information loop by the White House.
A new poll conducted jointly by The Washington Post and ABC News revealed some interesting trends. Among other findings, more Americans feel that Obama and his administration are lying about Benghazi, a majority feel that the IRS acted inappropriately by targeting conservative groups, and the media is still distrusted with a majority feeling that the Justice Department’s seizure of the AP’s phone records was justified. Despite all this disapproval, Obama’s approval rating is still just over 50 percent positive.
The Conservative Hispanic Society has joined the growing list of conservative groups that feel that they, too, were targeted by the Internal Revenue Service in its recent campaign of harassment. In a statement, CHS is “expressing outrage” over what it feels is Obama’s “infiltration of every aspect of our government.”
Earlier today it was reported that several Fox News reporters were targeted by the Department of Justice over interaction with an employee(s) at the State Department. In the investigation, Fox News’ James Rosen was fingered by the DOJ not as just a reporter getting “classified” information, but an “aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator.” This is such a shocking charge that even The New Yorker has come to Rosen’s support.
The destructive tornado that destroyed the quiet town of Moore, Oklahoma on the afternoon of May 20 was only a few hours gone, the devastation had yet to be measured, and the dead barely counted much less mourned and laid to rest before Politico’s Glenn Thrush felt it was already time to politicize the event and by scolding Oklahoma’s Senators because they are against global warming and big government spending, no less
Bill Press is a liberal radio show host with a syndicated show heard across the country, so, naturally, Press is also an Obama supporter. But even this Obama supporter thinks that it is time for U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to be fired.
On the May 19 broadcast of CNN’s State of the Union, host Candy Crowley said that Obama was late in identifying the attacks in Benghazi as terrorism quite contrary to what she said during the Presidential debates late last year.
Politico has declared embattled Attorney General Eric Holder untouchable after the many scandals, lapses, overreaches, and contempt charges have failed to induce the President to fire him.
CNN’s chief anti-gun zealot Piers Morgan may have been loathe to admit it, but this IRS scandal seems to validate some of his detractor’s distrust of government.
On May 14 after news broke that President Obama had once again attacked talk radio host Rush Limbaugh by name, El Rusbo joked that he was “living rent-free in Obama’s head.” It’s hard to fault Limbaugh’s logic on this. After all, the President of the United States of America has used his bully pulpit to bully Rush nearly a dozen times since he became President.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe host, Joe Scarborough, is nearly apoplectic over the recent IRS admission that it used the power of its office to intimidate conservative groups throughout Obama’s presidency. Not necessarily because the IRS was acting so poorly, but because the scandal hurts his anti-gun argument.
The journalist group Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has penned a letter of complaint to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder after revelations that the Dept. of Justice obtained the phone records of some 100 reporters from the Associated Press.
Former CNN host Soledad O’Brien recently said how tired she is of white people telling her that her TV shows on race are “too divisive.” In reply she tells white people that they just don’t understand race issues. She also says that only white people ever say that all Americans should consider themselves just Americans.
Due to low ratings, NBC has canceled Rock Center, the evening news program hosted by anchor Brian Williams. The program has only been on the air just over a year.
The Associated Press on Wednesday mischaracterized the Benghazi hearings as merely a Republican event even though it is an official House investigation.
MSNBC talker Toure thinks he has discovered a key security flaw in our nation’s policies and has suggested a solution. Poverty in the Muslim world, he says, is a key threat to U.S. security and to nullify that threat we should open the borders wide and let all Muslims come here to get jobs so that their poverty can be alleviated.