The End of the Golden Age
The message on my cellphone simply stated that I didn’t need to come into work that day.
It requested that I immediately return the call, but seeing that the message was left sometime in the pre-dawn hours, I didn’t feel an urgent need to call and confirm what I already knew. I had just been laid-off. By voicemail.
Management had alluded that layoffs might be coming, but wouldn’t say when. Instead, they gave frequent pep talks intended to instill esprit de corps within the ranks, praising the newsroom staff as the paper’s most valuable asset. Then they would remind us that payroll was their second-biggest expense, as if to imply that we were the problem. None of this did anything for morale. Already reduced to a skeleton crew by three previous buy-outs, the staff labored on like the walking dead. With typical newsroom black humor everyone joked about the possibility of layoffs, a distraction from the all-too real consequences of involuntary termination. I quietly cleaned out my desk a little each day, just in case. After that call, I never went back.
It was the end of the golden age of newspaper photojournalism.
Because the Leica Historical Society of America is a historical organization, and Leica is synonymous with photojournalism, I felt compelled to chronicle the passing of newspaper photojournalism as I once knew it.
My career in journalism started in a manner that would be impossible today. One day my mother noticed there was a new chief photographer at one of the two newspapers in town and suggested that I take my portfolio and “go down there and ask him for a job." Right Mom, like they‘d hire some kid in high school. They did. That initial summer internship became an extended internship; by the time I graduated college I had more on-the-job-experience than anyone else in my class. For the next 34 years I worked at newspapers throughout the West.
That was the heyday of Nikon, and any self-respecting photojournalist had several draped around his (or her) neck. I was no exception. Few photographers owned a Leica and, like the others, I was busy scrimping to afford Nikon’s latest wonder. My first Leica was a double-stroke M3, a hand-me-down from Dad’s vast collection of pawnshop “treasures.” Because its only lens was a 90/4 Elmar of corresponding vintage, it initially saw little use. SLRs were simply more versatile. Besides, that M3 with its skinny little 90 looked rather absurd next to a 180/2.8 mounted on a motorized F2.
I quickly found my Leica to be indispensable, however. The portrait of Andy Rooney is a perfect example. The M3 and 90 allowed me to unobtrusively take pictures while the reporter interviewed Rooney. My presence went virtually unnoticed because of the M’s nearly silent shutter. An SLR would have ruined the moment. Eventually I was able to afford a used 21/2.8 Elmarit — and I was smitten. I soon came to regard Leica as the ideal photojournalist tool.
The newsroom I left that day, a sterile cubicle-farm with its muffled patter of keyboards and soft glow of computer monitors, was a far cry from the newsroom where I started in 1976:
Amid the clatter of a hundred manual typewriters, an editor is chain-smoking his way through his second pack of the day. Scrolls of newsprint with stories typed on them litter his desk. Without looking up he yells, “Copy!” and a copyboy appears from nowhere to whisk a scroll of newsprint away. Interspersed between its typewritten lines are scores of copy edits marked in red grease pencil, hieroglyphics which few people today would understand. He takes a long draw on his cigarette and goes back to work editing another story, pausing only briefly before barking out another command, usually punctuated with a choice expletive.
The copyboy hands the scroll of newsprint to a typesetter in the production department. This is still the era of hot lead, where slugs of metal are cast to form galleys of type, which go on to create the printing plates for the presses. The air is heavy with a combination of cigar smoke, hot metal and paste-up wax. Without looking away from the scroll of newsprint, the typesetter dances his fingers across the keyboard, entering the story into the groaning, clanking typesetting machine.
A speaker in the corner of the photo department broadcasts the chatter from a police scanner, sounding somewhat like the soundtrack to a B-rated cop movie. The quiet is broken only by the occasional “clink” of stainless steel reels dropping into a tank or the whine from an MD-2 motor drive. All this is in marked contrast to the controlled chaos of the newsroom. I can still recall the smell of fresh Tri-X liberated from its canister, and the faint scent of fixer, which seemed to forever cling to my hands.
All of these are now just memories, vignettes from an era lost to time and technology.
A typical day at the newspaper started by picking up my assignments in the morning, usually shooting a couple of them before lunch. Then it was back out to shoot a couple more assignments, returning to the paper to soup my film and print the day's images. Traveling to and from assignments could take a good part of the day, and pile on mileage too. As a consequence, few photographers owned new cars (their money went to cameras), and a backseat littered with empty film containers was considered de rigueur. Night shifts usually involved high school sports and were shot under the pressure of a press-startup deadline, so photographers just shot the first quarter, returning to the paper to make deadline.
Despite the fact that newspapers operated in a deadline-driven environment, they were generally very pleasant places to work. I can only recall a few times when I was called at home to rush out and cover something that had “blown-up, burned-down or died”. The staff tended to be more like one big family, and there was a comradery in the journalism community that I rarely saw among other professions. The must-read book “Lost over Laos” by Richard Pyle and Horst Faas (reviewed in Viewfinder Vol. 36, #1) chronicles this bond in a moving and eloquent tribute to four photographers who perished while covering the conflict in Southeast Asia.
The late CBS commentator Andy Rooney, taken on the balcony of a hotel during an interview. Using my M3 to to remain unobtrusive, this was probably my first newspaper image taken with a Leica, using the only lens I had at the time, a 90/4 Elmar, shot wide open.
Journalism wasn’t a nine-to-five job. I enjoyed the odd-hours, not starting work until ten in the morning and working weekends so I could have weekdays off. A workweek of four, ten-hour days was common — the perfect balance between the daily newspaper production cycle and employee quality-of-life. Journalism didn’t pay much, but the nature of the work made up for that. The opportunity and access afforded to members of the press provided me with an ever-changing tableau of life to work from.
That access took me to places others could only dream about. One of those assignments was covering science in Antarctica, traveling light and using only an M6 with a 21 and 90 to document the story in B&W (see “Leica Ninety South” in Viewfinder Vol. 41, #1). While the fog of time has undoubtedly obscured the less exciting aspects of the job, and some assignments (and newspapers) were better than others, there were certainly times when being a photojournalist was the best job in the world.
I believed in the power of the visual image. Journalism was a profession where I thought I could make a difference in the world. Despite the public’s perception of the press, I found the ethics and integrity of the journalists I worked with to be far and above that of other professions. The 80's television series “Lou Grant” gave the general public a look at the daily life of journalists of that era and the issues they faced. The old episodes are worth a look. Every day could bring with it a new adventure, and I was out in the world documenting life from behind a camera, not sitting behind a desk somewhere shuffling papers.
Part way through my newspaper career I switched gears and went into graphics and illustration, as I had a degree in art as well. I continued to shoot, replacing my Nikons with Leicas. I had come to appreciate the more intimate and personal nature of photography with Leica. It wasn’t as versatile as an SLR, but that was part of the challenge — and satisfaction — of shooting with an M. I expected one day that I’d return to my roots in photojournalism.
It was a great ride while it lasted, but every golden age has its end.
Newspapers were largely responsible for their own demise. While the rise of the internet and the recession played their parts, corporate greed and the gutting of newsroom staffs ultimately sealed their fate. I offer here a brief insiders view into the collapse of journalism and newspapers.
The internet. Newspapers set themselves apart from radio and TV by offering more in-depth reporting and insight into the news. That all changed with the internet. Instead of preserving their in-depth coverage, newspapers rushed to become just like electronic media on the internet, changing their format into small, bite-size pieces of news and entertainment. In dumbing-down their content, they alienated readers and lost advertising. Newspapers were convinced that advertisers would switch exclusively to online advertising, and that publishing in cyberspace instead of on newsprint would garner them huge profits. That hasn’t happened.
Profits. Once a predominately family-owned industry, newspapers were slowly sold off by the family heirs in the 80‘s and 90’s, to the large media corporations that came calling. With corporate ownership came the demand for greater returns, and newspapers became beholden to the profit margin, not the public interest. When the economy tanked, newspapers — like countless other companies — used the economy as a convenient excuse to boost their profit margins by laying off employees. Profits aren’t bad per se, money makes the world go ‘round. The difference now, however, is how they’re used. Newspapers once re-invested profits back into the paper to improve it, hiring the best journalists and providing them with the time and resources necessary to cover the news in-depth. Now those profits go to corporations and their shareholders.
Brain drain. The rats are leaving the sinking ship, and everyone I know is scurrying to find the anchor chain. The irreplaceable brain trust of veteran reporters, with their knowledge and insight into the issues they covered, was lost almost overnight. Many of us left with a feeling of having been sold-out by the ones who should have been the guardians of the industry. After divesting themselves of journalists, newspapers turned around and hired web-savvy newbies with little or no journalism experience to take their place. In the process newsrooms were reduced to one-third the size. There is no way a staff that size can cover news the way they once did.
The fun was gone. The shift from newsroom "family" to corporate servitude quickly made itself apparent. All of us saw the end coming; it was just a matter of time. The question was where did we go with our lives from there. Some of the talented journalists who were shown the door that day found new life. Many reporters found jobs in public relations work for government or corporate entities, ironically becoming part of the institutions they once covered. All the photojournalists I know have moved on to other work, finding the need for photographers, in any field, has essentially disappeared.
Newspapers were the bastions of photojournalism. Aside from a handful of magazines and news organizations, newspapers were their biggest employers. Those jobs all but vanished as papers slashed their photo staffs. The Chicago Sun-Times went to the extreme of laying off their entire photo department in 2013. Photography was once a profession that required knowledge and experience — now anyone with a digital device is, by default, a “photographer.” With the internet being a virtually unlimited source of free or low-cost imagery there is simply no need for photojournalists.
Call me a cynical old newspaper guy, but I don’t see the digital media improving our lives in any way they claim it will. Newspapers forge ahead with their online product because it’s too late to go back, and the next generation seems happy to be fed whatever the internet is offering. Now, most people get their news from internet sites such as Yahoo, who have no professional or ethical responsibility to provide an objective or balanced presentation of the news. I cringe when I check my Yahoo account, and see what they have selected as "news" for the day, much of it thinly-disguised advertising or content provided by their corporate partners. It‘s a dangerous trend — news is no longer gathered by independent news organizations, but rather shaped by corporations. The future consequences from the loss of an independent media on society — and ultimately its role in the functioning of democracy — are truly disturbing.
The genie isn’t going back into the bottle. As much as I decry the loss of a profession that was once so much of my life, I have to acknowledge the fact that nothing I do will ever bring it back. I feel privileged to have been part of the golden age of newspaper photojournalism, but that world no longer exists. What saddens me most is not so much the loss of a job, but the loss of an ideal — and how easily the captains of the industry abandoned their journalistic integrity for the corporate profit margin.
Photo Cutlines:
baker press 01: My old press id’s, used as the lead photo for the story, no cutline necessary.
baker press 02: The late CBS commentator Andy Rooney, taken on the balcony of a hotel during an interview. Using my M3 to remain unobtrusive, this was probably my first newspaper image taken with a Leica, using the only lens I had at the time, a 90/4 Elmar, shot wide open.