The title says it all.
After about a year of thinking about it, it's official I've finally decided and acted on it. I'm leaving the newspaper business. It wasn't a decision that came easy yet one that has crept up on me over the years in stride. Newspaper ink (or pixels in
internet terms) has run through my veins (figuratively) for nearly a decade now.
Here's how it all started....
I was a sophomore in high school taking an English class, which was taught by the same person who was the yearbook adviser. The classroom was full of your typical yearbook type pictures that hung on the wall. I don't know exactly what the teacher noticed, but she must have saw something in me that led her to believe that I might be interested in photography, because she asked me to be a yearbook photographer my junior year. I had never really had an interest in photography but figured it might be an easy "A" and if nothing else beat doing anything with actual homework.
Long story short, the yearbook stuff turned out to be pretty fun and within a few weeks I started to figure out how to operate a camera. The small local newspaper saw my work and liked it and I began photographing all of their sports. It was a pretty sweet gig where I photographed all of the high school sports for the paper in a
tri-county area. A gig that was fun, I could do after school, and one that I could make a bit of money at. Seemed like a winner to me.
When thinking about college came around it seemed to be a natural fit to go into something that I already enjoyed. Photography was something that I had become pretty good at for a high school kid. It's kind of funny now but I didn't really know that there was an exact job category for a newspaper photographer. After a "
webcrawler" (my
internet search engine of choice in 2001) search I figured out that there was a college major called photojournalism and from there found that Ball State offered a program that fit the job description. Sweet... Applied, accepted, moved to
BSU.
College was a lot of fun. The photojournalism classes were right up my alley and working at the student newspaper along with my two internships (The Star-Press in
Muncie, IN and The Vindicator in Youngstown, OH) offered a team setting that I seemed to work well with. I liked the quick deadlines, the diversity of assignments and the people I came in contact with are experiences that I'll never forget.
After graduating and finishing my second internship and about ready to start my third at the South Bend Tribune, I received a phone call following a job fair from the Editor at the Huntington Herald-Press about a job opening at the paper. The paper had a good reputation as a feisty small paper which liked strong visual storytelling and had a dynamo staff of veterans which are some of the best journalists I've ever come in contact with. The paper was about 25 minutes from my parent's house. (aka good cooking, no rent, not having to scrounge quarters for the laundry machines) I took the job at the H-P and turned down the internship in South Bend and started my full-time photojournalism career.
It didn't take long to figure out that this was going to be an adjustment. First off, you don't go into photojournalism because of the money. Let's just say journalism isn't that type of field. Secondly, I quickly learned that being the only full-time photographer at the paper meant that I was going to be on call ... all the time. Being a morning paper meant being there at 7:30 a.m. in case there was any news prior to an 11 a.m. deadline and then finding something for the next day's paper that afternoon and not forgetting that there is going to be some sort of sporting event that night that would need covered too. A lot of driving and a lot of hours but I had the ability to do pretty much whatever I wanted with the photography in the newspaper. Having a lot of control over the visuals made it a lot of fun and probably the period of time where I learned the most because if I failed in my task (which I tried to not have happen) it showed up in the paper. I was at the paper for about a year and decided to move on to a bigger paper. It was a job that was fun for a single person but one that wasn't sustainable for anyone who wanted a life outside of work. I think I was averaging around 60 hours a week or so.
After The H-P I packed up all my stuff, said goodbye to Mom and Dad and moved to Columbus, Ind. to work at The Republic. Working at The Republic was different because it was bigger paper, a bigger coverage area and a staff of photographers. A staff that I have really enjoyed working with over the nearly 4 years I've been here. It's a job that has allowed me to have some pretty neat opportunities including photographing Barack Obama and The Brickyard 400 (might be better if I were a
NASCAR fan). Some of my favorite assignments of all involved people who weren't rich or famous though. They were the people that knew who they were and weren't afraid to share.
So why am I leaving? Well, after a lot of time and thought I've decided I wanted to pursue something different. A newspaper photographer isn't exactly a life of leisure. It's a life on the run and one that you get to see a lot of cool things, however it's also a job that requires an odd work schedule (including holidays, weekends and evenings) and a lot of not so much fun behind the scenes stuff. I wasn't doing as much storytelling photojournalism as I had once done. The job had become a job that I liked the idea of but one that didn't reflect my idea of what it had the potential to be. With that I am leaving the newspaper with plenty of good memories and friendships and am looking ahead.
So what am I going to do?
I am excited about accepting a job as a digital marketing specialist at
CRH, the hospital in Columbus. It's a job that I think will be a good fit for me and for my family. It's also a job I can grow with. I think it will offer a different type of challenge and will involve a lot of the skills that I already have such as video, web and multimedia type skills along with the opportunity to learn and improve in areas too.
I'm not planning on leaving photojournalism completely though. I am going to continue to teach a photojournalism class at Ivy Tech during the spring semester and will continue to work on a freelance basis for a few clients in the future. I also plan on devoting more time for some personal photo projects as well as shooting for fun, which is something that I'm really looking forward to doing.
Big things are happening...
Here's a picture of me that ran in The Herald-Press when I first joined the staff.
