Attitudes to the Drogheda Independent house agreement

All respondents were asked their opinion of the NUJ-negotiated Drogheda Independent House Agreement. This was survey question seven.

The NUJ’s Irish Office has signed a house agreement with the Drogheda Independent newspaper which includes a clause which allows photographs to be supplied by the staff reporters. Which of these five statements most closely matches your opinion of this clause ?
All respondents
NUJ members
Non-NUJ members
NI/ROI respondents
 
I strongly oppose the clause. 63.4%
74.7%
55.1%
80.8%
 
I moderately oppose the clause. 16.9%
13.3%
19.7%
7.7%
 
I have no feelings either way about the clause. 8.5%
5.4%
10.6%
3.9%
 
I moderately support the clause. 1.1%
0.6%
1.5%
  0 %
 
I strongly support the clause. 0.3%
0.6%
  0%
  0%
 
I don’t know enough about the issue to form an opinion 9.9%
5.4%
13.1%
7.7%
 

Additional comments left by NUJ members:

  • “The Drogheda inhouse agreement will collapse around itself and we as NUJ members will have to get better organised to campaign against this feckless deal and to reclaim the NUJ as a union for workers rights within the media. Let’s keep up the pressure and make the NUJ become the union that fights for us members. “
  • “I feel the Drogheda Agreement is a very serious threat to my livelihood”
  • “The local social ‘dinner dance’ ‘cheque signing’ etc type of Newspaper photography at the heart of the DI house Agreement ruction is not practiced by those most vocal in their disagreement to its implementation nor supposing they did, would they have ever signed a contract to undertake such work at the price offered!”
  • “The agreement to let reporters take pics show how highly photographers are valued – as in not at all. Its a difficult enough profession at the best of times and the time it takes to convince people that it is a highly professional occupation has just been torn to shreds and by the union that is meant to represent us – what kind of message does that give? “

Additional comments left by non NUJ members:

  • “As a freelance journalist I turned to photography a few years ago, in part because I wanted to enhance my journalist skills in a tightly competitive market. Partly this came out of my NCTJ course where there was a photography module which taught us how to take photos in on cheap digitals – for publication. It’s taken a lot of training, rejections and time to get to a decent standard (much more than I originally assumed) and I don’t like to photograph and report news stories together as I feel I compromise both angles and I won’t photograph for publications I write for if they want the pics for free. Last week I interviewed five journalists for a freelance job. Two of them offered photography as part of their range of skills. Neither had any photographic training or knowledge of the industry. One kept talking about how you could do anything these days with a large digital camera and the other said she wanted to work for free for the chance of getting published and putting her portfolio together. Neither had an understanding of the value of good photography (perhaps we should be making an effort to educate these guys too). The industry is changing and several photographers are now offering articles too – it works both ways and can work well for features.”
  • “In 1997 I was employed by a large national agency in the UK to become a trainee reporter with the view that I would save the company money as they would get words and pictures from one person without having to employ two people. In essence this was a good idea, I was already an experienced photographer and had a degree in politics from Cambridge University, so I was pretty literate. I struggled. I produced bad copy and bad photographs as I had half a head on each job. It was particularly difficult on hard news jobs as you can’t physically wield a camera and get all the pertinent quotes down at the same time. Then I had two desks fighting over me, both wanting their output first. If anyone should have been able to do this job with ease, I should, and I found it difficult. In my opinion, photos give a newspaper its identity. With rubbish pictures on the pages, the overall product looks poor and that switches readers off very quickly. Similarly, mistakes in copy, factual not literal, also turn readers off as they look to newspapers as a source of reliable comment and hate to be mislead by error as they feel foolish for believing what has been written. Once you lose credibility, your readership will desert you. If newspapers need to save money, and I don’t deny that they do as advertising revenue in the traditional fields of property and recruitment, melt away to the web, then they should look to source quality photography from good agencies instead, which is paid for by a service fee, such as PA, or a one off usage fee, such as REX. Reporters can’t report if they’re trying to think about a picture too, and photographers will miss the picture if they’re trying to get quotes down. Both skills are essential to a newspaper and employees will have a much higher productivity rate if they are not being torn in two directions.”