November 5, 2013

NetNewsCheck | Jim Romenesko | Creative Loafing Atlanta | NPAA

Photographers at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution will become “multimedia visual journalists” after planned job cuts, a spokesperson tells Lou Carlozo. The cuts, once planned for Nov. 1, haven’t taken place yet, AJC spokesperson Drue Miller tells Poynter, but “internal announcements will be made soon.”

“The newspaper and its websites will be expected to provide video, and to engage our audience through social media, apps and any other products that might come along,” Andy McDill said. “Ultimately the model could follow what Cox did at the Dayton Daily News, which converged print, Web, TV and radio platforms in 2010,” Carlozo reports.

“There, our strategy involves all media reporters with iPhones, [along with] photographers, TV videographers, and even our customers,” McDill told him.

Jim Romenesko reported Monday that Dayton Daily News staffers received a memo asking them not to publish stories that “cast our station in a negative light.” Cox’s Dayton station, WHIO TV, is a CBS affiliate, and the Daily News had run a story that “cast all of the TV networks, including CBS, in a negative light,” Rashida Rawls told staffers.

AJC Editor Kevin Riley told staffers in October that the photo department would go from 11 staffers to 6. Photographers there told the National Press Photographers Association they had “a few days to decide whether to accept offers of voluntary buy-outs before layoffs.”

Related: Chicago Sun-Times lays off its photo staff

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Kristen Hare teaches local journalists the critical skills they need to serve and cover their communities as Poynter's local news faculty member. Before joining faculty…
Kristen Hare

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