Say It Ain't So Already

CNN Exploits Claim-to-Famers

December 15, 2011 at 6:57 PM 4 comments

If you’re like me, you’ve seen CNN urge viewers to send photos of “breaking news” in to their iReporter site as long as people didn’t “endanger” their lives in order to do so.  And, if you’re like me, you thought CNN was exploiting people who wanted to see their photos on CNN, because CNN didn’t have to send a reporter or a photojournalist to the location to get those pictures themselves.

Well, here’s the result of all that:

In the middle of last month, Jack Womack, CNN’s senior vice president of domestic news operations, sent around a memo to staffers. It was not the kind of memo people like to get right before the holidays. “We… spent a great deal of time analyzing how we utilize and deploy photojournalists across all of our locations in the U.S.,” wrote Womack. “We looked at production demands, down time, and international deployments. We looked at the impact of user-generated content and social media, CNN iReporters and of course our affiliate contributions in breaking news. Consumer and pro-sumer technologies are simpler and more accessible. Small cameras are now high broadcast quality. More of this technology is in the hands of more people. After completing this analysis, CNN determined that some photojournalists will be departing the company.”

In short, because it was receiving so many photo submissions via its user-generated iReport platform, CNN decided that it could afford to do away with 12 of its full-time photographers.

So, to all the people who want their name and photo shown on CNN, know they’re using your hunger for a few seconds of fame to save a ton — a ton — of money, as in the salaries of 12 full-time employees.

Entry filed under: CNN / TimeWarner. Tags: .