# Photojournalist Alex Garcia leaving Chicago Tribune



## The_Traveler (Aug 3, 2014)

I follow his blog because it is really insightful and interesting.
He can get good to great pictures on any assignment and writes damn well also.

Now it seems he is *leaving Chicago Tribune* to be a freelancer.  
This kind of 'leaving to pursue other interests' has also meant before that someone was let go.
My guess his severance included an agreement about what he could say. 
I certainly hope he kept a mailing list.

Is the Tribune going the route of the Sun-Times in firing photographers?

What a bad sign - and a bad thing to happen.
Best of luck to Alex.


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## dennybeall (Aug 6, 2014)

Change is always sad for some. Having staff photogs has always been an expensive deal. Now with every Tom , Dick and Mary snapping photos on scene at anything that even remotely resembles news and willing to send them in just for a byline, the need for staff photogs has been reduced to almost zip.
I can vividly remember sitting at the old wooden desk by the darkroom listening to the police radio blaring in the City Room of the old Washington Daily News. You'd hear a call on the radio and one of the "photogs" would grab their banged up Nikon "F", some Tri-X 400ASA, and run for their car. Didn't pay that well but sure was interesting.
We'll never see those days again I don't believe.


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## Derrel (Aug 6, 2014)

Single-city newspapers are really dying off. Circulation figures have plummeted terribly in the past half-decade, after a prior decade's worth of steady annual drops of significant levels. My region's only big daily, The Oregonian, was begun in the 1850's. At one time it had 600,000 daily ciculation and around one million copies every Sunday--in a state that at the time, had only about two million people in total population! Now the population of the state is over three million, but the Big O recently ceased daily home delivery about two years ago, going to a reduced days home delivery schedule, and then earlier this year, a couple months ago actually, they went from their traditional large page format down to "compact" or "tabloid" size...sheesh...they can barely afford the paper to print the damned thing on...and this after six years of rounds of staff firings and severance deals...

A few years ago, The Oregonian repeatedly called me, trying to sell daily home delivery to me for a ridiculously low figure, like $5 a MONTH--just to keep their circulation figures up, so they could prove their worth to advertisers. I realized then that I had NO DESIRE, whatsoever, to have it cluttering up my life on a daily basis, telling me what HAD ALREADY happened. Hundreds of thousands also felt the same way it seems.

Daily, single-city newspaper publishing, on paper, and home delivered, with a big, fat 2-pound Sunday edition...almost gone the way of the livery stable...once everywhere, now, fading fast as the big, new internet news machine replaces the old ways of disseminating news and information about services and goods for sale.

The big killer for daily newspapers has been Craigslist and its FREE, nation-wide classified advertising available on all internet devices. NEwspapers made HUGE profit margins from overpriced classified ads. You know, people complain about eBay fees, but daily newspaper classified advertising prices were OBSCENELY high and predatory. The classifieds are where the big,big,big money was made, and once Craigslist popped up, newspaper classified ad sales went into the toilet. FAST. And so began the rapid,rapid decline of daily papers.


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## waday (Aug 6, 2014)

My family didn't subscribe to the local newspaper, but my grandparents got it delivered every day. I remember going in to my grandparents' house and reading the funnies and paging through the newspaper. As a child, I wasn't interested in the articles, but I like looking at the pictures. Picking up a newspaper today holds quite a bit of nostalgia for me--especially the smell and feel of the ink and paper. While I routinely look to electronic devices for news, I wouldn't mind the good ol' newspaper at the front door (or wherever the delivery person would decide to throw it).


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