Reading an article in the Boston Business Journal about staff cuts at Gatehouse Media I wondered if this affected the Metro unit based in Needham. When I retired, as a staff photographer, about two and a half years ago this division covered cities and towns from Sharon to Somerville … including Newton. Looking at Wednesday’s Newton TAB I noticed there was not one photo taken by the Metro photo staff. There were photos taken by the reporters, a few courtesy photos, and one by a staff photographer out of the Concord office. It is the first time since my association with the Newton TAB in over 34 years that there was no photography produced by local staff or stringers. In checking with one of my former colleagues it was confirmed that the Metro unit photo staff is now gone. A sad day for Newton and community journalism.
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This is more than sad. Over the decades the TAB’s photography staff was second to none and documented every aspect of life in our city: from breaking news to the first and last days of school.
The timing is ironic too, given that WickedLocal’s new website design is totally photography dependent.
You know, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to subscribe to a physical copy of the TAB via the web. It’s not in the list of papers on their website for whatever reason. That seems like a pretty big problem right there.
I wish we could have something like the Somerville Scout. These wickedlocal sites suck. I’d suggest everyone watch John Oliver’s segment about the erosion of local media. Just don’t stand too close to a ledge while you do.
What terrible news. It’s hard to grasp why they wouldn’t want their own photographers.
Yuppie Scum, I get three. You’re welcome to 2 of them. Subscribing and unsubscribing to the Tab is a mysterious process.
I always watch Jon Oliver but I think I will check out that one again.
Budget and resource cutbacks have been slowly killing The TAB. It’s been going on for a long time now. Despite employing talented people Gatehouse Media seems to tie their hands.
One story in particular tipped me off to this unfortunate trend years ago. I think Gail was Editor at that time, when some brilliant field reporting tracked a dump truck with debris from the [then under construction] NNHS site. The reporter had photos of the driver removing a hazardous waste placard, and tracked the fully loaded truck to another construction site [Medford?], when it was supposed to have gone to a disposal facility in Maine. The trucking company claimed to have taken the debris to the construction site to “weigh” it. But I always suspected they were lying, and used the asbestos laden material as free fill for their Medford construction site.
If The TAB had the resources to properly follow up, I believe the full story would have resulted in a Pultizer Prize nomination, and forced the [then] Mayor to resign. But because The TAB didn’t have the budget to properly follow up, the full dirty dumping story never really came to light.