Barbed Wire, originally uploaded by Gavin Lewis.

Paper uses Subbuteo to defy club’s photo ban

A friend led me to this article earlier today and it did make me laugh out loud. You have to applaud the Swindon Advertiser’s ingenuity – playing out the key moments of a match on a Subbuteo table and photographing it instead of paying the club for their own in-house photos. The link above also refers to another paper that used Roy of the Rovers style cartoons instead of photo’s.

Once I’d stopped laughing I did stop to wonder what this meant for the world of press photography. I can understand companies using their own staff to take photos – it means you don’t have to wrestle for control of images you’ve paid for, you don’t have to go out to tender for some photographs and whilst your staffer isn’t taking photo’s or post processing, he or she can be utilised for other things – even if it is just making the tea. If your business is image and press orientated it does make sense to have your own photographers, graphic designers etc – where I work we have done the same. The department bought a high end Canon or two and uses existing staff to shoot at press engagements and functions. The images are then uploaded to the website or used in print where necessary.

It doesn’t quite explain why a football club has decided to shut out the press – all it does is hurt an already wounded animal. It’s hind legs have been bitten off by the freely available news on the internet and what is left is being nibbled at by greedy football clubs. Why not just employ your own photographers and let the papers get on with what they do best? If anyone buys the in-house shots, great but if the press aren’t happy with you their readers will be the first to know.

As the article suggests, there is mutual benefit to both club and the press – the match sells papers, the paper drives interest in the club. What if the press decided to ignore the club completely? If it refused to publish fixtures, results or post-match analysis – or if it invoiced the club for column inches? The paper would take a bit of a hit, but with football clubs going into administration fairly regularly these days, I do wonder who would come off worse. With a bit of co-operation between papers, Southamption FC could disappear from the public eye completely.

There is more to news than just football after all…