The Chicagoist will be launching later but in the meantime please enjoy our archives.

Photos: Chicago Sun-Times Photographers, Supporters Protest Firings

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jun 6, 2013 6:10PM

Photographers from the Chicago Sun-Times and their supporters, including many current reporters and staffers, took to the streets Thursday morning outside the paper's offices to stage a one-hour picket line protesting their firings. The Sun-Times fired its entire photography staff a week ago as part of a restructuring how they handle multimedia across their entire network (they say readers want more multimedia with their stories), and are training reporters in iPhone photography basics.

The Chicago Newspaper Guild is filing a charge with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming the Sun-Times bargained in bad faith. Photographer Scott Stewart told ABC 7 there was no union representation in the room when the firings occurred. Another photographer, Curtis Lehmkuhl, said "We were told that there wasn't going to be any layoffs of photographers and reporters during the bargaining process, then last Thursday all the photographers are laid off, so it also seems like some sort of union busting thing as well."

For most of the hour the photographers, reporters and other supporters marched in a circle chanting, "they say cut back, we say fight back." The rally received a boost from Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis, who arrived to show solidarity with the photographers.

"You all have taken cut after cut after cut. You all have worked with these people to try to put out this paper," Lewis said. "But guess what? It will never stop. They will continue to ask for more and more and more. And to get rid of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers tells you these people don't care about quality. They care about the bottom line, the spreadsheet and not the people who made that happen.

"The can try all the digital media they want," Lewis added. "This newspaper will fold without the people who do the work."