Using team photographers

Hi all,
Question I was hoping for an opinion or two on:
I'm the sports editor of a smallish daily. We have a local minor league hockey team that employs its own photographer for home games. The photos and cutlines are generally pretty good, and he shares photos at the end of every period.
For midweek games, because our staff rarely has someone available, I've fallen into the habit of using the team photos; in most cases, we only use one action shot and it goes inside the section.
Any time there was a big game or promotion that we planned to use on our cover, I would assign art instead of using the team photos, but in most cases, they served our purpose quite efficiently.
Our photo editor recently asked me to assign all games so that they could shoot the ones they could get to; I agreed. However, he has since started assigning (and paying) freelancers to do games the staff can't cover. I told him we should save the budget and use the team photos, and he took offense and said that was a conflict of interest.
Am I in the wrong here? Is using the team photos that big of a conflict that I should stand down?

 

This is exactly what I was going to say. If they are giving you several options and you get to decide what gets in, I see no problem here.

When I was SE of a small weekly, I took advantage of several situations like this. We had one camera and two people covering games for six high school teams on Friday nights. (Yeah, no photographer. Had to take notes and photos. Don't miss that at all.) When a guy who worked at one of the schools saw me struggling to transition from notepad to camera, he offered to take photos of the game for free with his camera that was nicer than the one we had. I practically kissed him on the mouth.

 

Advantages of a freelancer:

• If -- for some reason -- you wanted to do a feature on a player on the other team, you could ask the freelancer to get good art of him. Team photog would not do that.

• If there is some controversial play -- player punches a fan, coach screams spittle at officals -- team photog probably would not provide that for you.

• If an opposing player scores 3-4 goals and is the star, freelancer would hopefully provide art of him; team photog would not.

90 percent of the time, however, sounds like this team photog would serve the purpose. Trouble is, you usually don't know when you need that 10 percent.

 

Great post. I take photos for our website and magazine and have no problems sharing with the statewide media free of charge, knowing that it's tough to get a fotog out to golf tournaments. It's good pub for us and helps fill the need for a paper. Win-win. Your last point is a huge one, though. One editor at a paper called this year and started asking for shots of specific players, and I had to draw the line there. If you want that, you need to send someone yourself. I have a lot of other duties, other than just taking photos. I'll share what I have, but I'm not completing specific assignments unless you want to pay for it.

 

Agreed, if the team shooter is giving you what you need, why not use it? And your shooters are available to shoot all the check passings, pets of the week, JV girls volleyball, etc., that are usually handouts. Or is the head photog getting territorial?

I was in a similar situation when a local school was hosting the state girls wrestling tournament at its gym. We didn't do much with it beyond a photo spread on the first day since no locals qualified and we were knee-deep in section basketball playoffs, but would get requests from other papers in the state to shoot their kids. What I ended up doing was honoring the requests from papers in our company, and referring the rest to a stringer who once worked for us.

 

It sounds like to me the photo editor realizes he's vulnerable in this economy, day and age. That's not your problem. And you definitely should not be wasting your stringer budget money on photos when the team has a photographer already there. I would continue to use the photos provided by the team and your own photographer when he is able to cover it. There is VERY little --- if ANY --- conflict of interest in this situation. It's not a written piece, it's simply the art that goes with it. As long as you are getting multiple shots to choose from, then it's totally acceptable in my book. With such little wiggle room in most budgets these days, you should definitely take advantage of it. My newspaper accepts photos from a variety of sources, including a school's sports information department and the conference they are affiliated with, along with reader-submitted photos that make the grade as far as relevancy and quality.

Photographers are seeing their jobs getting cut all over. Look at what National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, and the Chicago Sun Times have done to their photo departments. We've cut our staff from three full-time photographers to one, and it's common knowledge that our photographer will be let go with the next round of layoffs. I suspect your photographer is feeling this heat and somehow trying to justify his existence. Again, that's not your problem.

If you can't get this resolved between you and he/she, I would take it to your superiors and let them decide.

 

From this side of the fence -- we make it a point that the local shop has art, especially at conference tournament time with the non-revenue sports. We just keep picture 1A and 1B for ourselves and are happy to share 1C et al...

For basketball, I make it a point that each player has both a head shot and a "poster" or "evergreen" action shot (picture of the player with no one else in the background) on file in case the local shop needs art or my photog doesn't show...

Now, for the time the other poster called "the 10 percent" story. What you have to keep in mind is (1) This was six years ago when I was in my first year back and only on contract after the SID quit 3 days before kickoff (2) AP still staffed/strung every DI game (3) I'm men's Basketball SID and the women's SID is a kid one year out of school and acts like it. (4) I used to string for the local shop and (5) I have to report to the marketing director, who is a cool guy but clueless about media relations. Fun times.

Especially when at 12 minutes remaining in the women's game of the DH, a full brawl breaks out, with scuffles all over the court. A real slobberknocker, as old JR would say. Except for the AP stringer, no deadline media is there. Remember that.

Everyone else is freaking. I've seen a couple of these and going "well, the night is getting interesting." The kid's in a panic and I go "Chill the f--- out, make sure no one posts on social media and write whatever the AD tells you. My game is still going to start and you're doing stats."

So my guys win by 25 and regain first place in the league. I send in my nice 300 word ditty with quotes. My friend on the desk goes "anything about the women's game you wanna tell me?"

Me: "As the men's basketball SID, I defer to my counterpart with the women's team. As one of your former writers ... 'your ass should have been here'. Tell the wife and kids hi."

So here's what the local shop had. Remember the AP stringer? Of course he filed a story about the brawl. What the local shop did since he's also one of their stringers, was slap his byline on the AP story so it looked like they had someone there. And somehow, someway, they had a really good photo that we couldn't figure out how they got at first.

The next day was fun:
1) The women's SID comes into my cubicle and goes "ESPN wants video of the fight" My response "Tell 'em you'll trade 'em for Olbermann's personnel folder, that's fair."

2) The marketing director said "it would be nice to know where that photo came from." Me: "What're you're saying is drop everything I'm doing and find out because you trust me more." "Yep." Wasn't that difficult. Went on a fan blog and found the photo, but who took it? Turns out there was this other stadium journey blogger who was in town and just happened to be in our gym. Who credentialed him? "My bad," said the women's SID.

(This is the part where I allowed myself to appreciate my friend on the desk's hustling that night. Exactly what I would have done in his case. And the photographer/blogger? His job as well. We're the ones who got in the fight.)

So I called the stadium journey blogger, who thinks me and the marketing director are going to cuss him out. I go, "chill out, what you need to do is call the editor of the local shop and make sure they pay you for that photo and give you credit, and if I were you, I'd charge a little extra for originally running your photo without your permission." The marketing director looks at me and goes "You know, you're right." (He did get a photo credit and a check)

3) Instead of using my 300-word ditty on the men's game in any shape or form, the local shop ran the AP story that included two typos, a fact error and did not mention the fact we were now in first place in the league. Now, THAT annoyed me. The stringer, another old friend, called me on his own and apologized. His copy the rest of the year was error-free. (And I encouraged him to bill the local shop for using his name. It was a nice try.)

4) The beat writer called, and after trying to justify not being there, asked me for my radio guy's cell phone because he wanted the radio guys account of the brawl (For the record, we told him and all affiliated staff not to comment on it. The radio guy did anyway.) I told him to call the station or the women's SID. "Why won't you give me the number?" "Because I'm the Men's SID and this is a women's team issue. We're on the road Saturday. You need anything for that game?" He got the point.

So the AD and the sports editor had the obligatory sit down afterwards, and it turned all right. And afterwards, my people listened to me about what the local shop needs. I won the day when said. "That's why they call it media relations...."

Hope I didn't bore you.

 

Find a way to get the team photographer to take pictures and then shift the free-lancer money into your own pocket.

 

That's exactly how it should work. Of course, nowadays with athletic departments in full put-a-happy-face-on-it mode, likely won't happen.

 

I would love to know the best way to get into sports information. From everything I've seen in my area, most college assistant SID positions are tied to being a graduate student. I really don't want to start paying student loans again. Is there any way around that if I want to get my foot in the door?

 

Two words: Fake transcript.