And high time, too.

When the CEO of Yahoo!, Marissa Meyer, stated the other day that there are no more professional photographers when addressing the changes at Flickr, she was dead right. Sure, in true politically correct fashion she retracted her truthful opinion, but that does not change how right it was.

I wrote the same thing here six years ago. It’s obvious.

The other day the Chicago Sun Times laid off all its staffer photographers. They are all freelancers now, just like you and me. And the reason is simple. You luck out at and find yourself at whatever the breaking news of the day happens to be and your cell phone records the happening for the Times and for posterity. In full movie mode, likely as not. Why pay some guy to do that when the Times can get it from you free, or pretty close? And you will have been in the right place at the right time.

Photojournalism – the paid kind – is dead and about time. Anyone can take a picture and PJ does not demand quality results. It demands that the photographer was at the scene. And we are all photographers now. Today Capa’s dying Spanish revolutionary soldier would have been pictured by his colleague in the trenches with his iPhone. The picture would be no better or worse. All it took was being there. And unlike Capa’s image, quite possibly faked judging by his contact sheet which seems to be surprisingly unavailable from Magnum, the modern one would be the real thing.

Capa’s dying soldier – or not.

You say that human interest stories demand solid training and great gear? Fine have at it. But they aren’t worth very much to a media outlet catering to a zero attention span audience. High time these so called photojournalists were off the payroll as the economics make no sense.