May 31, 2013, 4:30 pm 184 Comments

Do Newspapers Need Photographers?By LAWRENCE DOWNES

The comments are worth reading.

"This is the age of the multimedia journalist: basic writer, basic photographer, basic videographer, basic editor, basic social media user, basic coder. Such a journalist, if properly trained, can be counted to perform all of these in a competent and ethical manner.  

But one thing they cannot be counted on to do -- because it is impossible -- is to do perform some of these tasks simultaneously. "

"Since most newspapers are now online, we actually need higher quality photographs from a technical perspective, not lesser quality. In the days when we only printed small photographs on cheap newsprint with low resolution screen printing, the tech quality didn't need to be that great - the old 4x5 Speed Graflex and medium format Rolleiflex negatives were overkill (although many of those images now hang in museums). But now that we see color images on screens in which the resolution increases every few years, we need a quality that today's cell phones cannot capture. I'd like to see someone capture a great sports image at night on a cell phone. Not going to happen. Even the paparazzi still use DSLRs and they don't care about quality at all. "