Digitally Savvy

The Chicago Tribune reports that its sister publication, The Chicago Sun-Times, has fired all of its photographers and plans to use freelance photographers and reporters with smart phones to shoot photos. According to the Sun-Times:

"The Sun-Times business is changing rapidly and our audiences are consistently seeking more video content with their news. We have made great progress in meeting this demand and are focused on bolstering our reporting capabilities with video and other multimedia elements. The Chicago Sun-Times continues to evolve with our digitally savvy customers, and as a result, we have had to restructure the way we manage multimedia, including photography, across the network."



The story did not shock me. It is just the latest in a newspaper taking action to improve its bottom line by the novel approach of cheapening its product. What intrigued me were the words, "The Chicago Sun-Times continues to evolve with our digitally savvy customers.....". Digitally savvy customers? Sounds impressive but what in hell is a digitally savvy customer?

As I understand it, the modern definition of a digitally savvy person is someone who can use computers or other digital equipment. A digitally savvy person is also one who can use numbers and do arithmetic. Now that explains the "evolve" part of the Sun-Times statement. When all we could do was work with numbers on a sheet of paper we needed professional news coverage. Now that we have evolved into computer savvy individuals and become addicted to smart phones we have no need for sophisticated newspapers; Twitter, You Tube and Facebook will do the trick as well as dumbed down newspapers.