Last week in a 20-second meeting with Chicago Sun-Times Editor-in-Chief Jim Kirk, some 28 Sun-Times photographers and photo editors—the paper’s entire photo department—were told they were fired. 

Photographer John White, with 44 years at the paper, told Poynter Institute’s Kenneth Irby that the meeting was “intimidating” and said, “There was a toxic and unkind spirit in the office.”

This is what I remember hearing: ‘As you know we are going forward into multimedia and video, and that is going to be our focus. So we are eliminating the photography department.’ Then they turned it over to HR.

You can show your support for the Sun-Times photographers and photo editors by liking their Facebook page Save the Sun-Times Photojournalists and by signing this Chicago Newspaper Guild (CNG) petition to Sun-Times CEO Timothy Knight demanding the paper step back from the layoffs and come to the bargaining table.    

Knight yesterday refused to meet with a group of CNG members and leaders. CNG President David Pollard says:

We asked Mr. Knight to come to the bargaining table because we’ve exhausted all the options. We’ve met with the same group of Sun-Times Media representatives and we cannot move forward. We need to talk to someone else—there’s something wrong and the guy in charge needs to figure it out.

The company claims the firings—effective that day—had nothing to do with contract negotiations between the Sun-Times and the CNG that have been ongoing since last year.

CNG Executive Director Craig Rosenbaum says that at a recent bargaining session Sun-Times negotiators said the paper had no plans to lay off photographers. He says CNG plans to file unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board.  

The paper says it will replace the photographers’ work by equipping reporters with iPhones and hiring low-paid freelancers. Rival Chicago Tribune photojournalist Alex Garcia says, “The idea that freelancers and reporters could replace a photo staff with iPhones is idiotic at worst and hopelessly uninformed at best.”

In a blog reacting to the firings, Garcia explains the unique role the Sun-Times photographers play in reporting the news.  

Most Sun-Times photojournalists I knew, because of their decades of experience, were unsung journalists more than photographers. They knew how things worked and what made communities tick. They found stories and passed them on. They helped to shape stories, correct misperceptions and convey understandings that have deep resonance with readers. I am sure that many of their reporter colleagues would attest to this.

Read Garcia’s full blog: The Idiocy of Eliminating a Photo Staff.

The Newspaper Guild-CWA (TNG-CWA) President Bernie Lunzer says:

This is offensive and wrong on so many levels. As a union, we are deeply concerned about the workers who are losing good, family-wage jobs. As an organization of journalists, we are appalled that any newspaper would treat its photojournalists as expendable.