AP Drops at Least Eight in Photo Staff

By: Daryl Lang/Photo District News Associated Press national photo editor Victor Vaughan lost his job in a round of layoffs this week.

Vaughan, who was based at AP headquarters in New York, is no longer working there, a source at the AP tells PDN. Vaughan?s departure was also reported by Gawker and the Maynard Institute?s Journal-isms blog, which noted that Vaughan was one of the AP?s highest ranking journalists of color. A voice mail left for Vaughan at his office Wednesday morning was not returned.

The News Media Guild, which represents AP employees in the U.S., said on its Web site that 57 employees received termination notices Tuesday, including five photographers.

AP spokesperson Paul Colford declined to comment on the layoffs, other than to cite a previous statement that the AP planned to cut its global payroll costs by 10 percent in 2009.

Photographers cut this week include Texas-based Harry Cabluck and Donna McWilliam; Anchorage, Alaska-based Al Grillo; Hanoi, Vietnam-based Chitose Suzuki and two part-time photographers in Boston, an AP source tells PDN.

Gawker and NPPA News Photographer also reported photographer Mary Ann Chastain in Columbia, South Carolina, was being let go, and identified the two Boston-based photographers as Winslow Townsend and Lisa Poole.

Vaughan joined the AP in April 2007, coming from the The Arizona Daily Star, where he was assistant managing editor for presentation. He previously worked as an editor at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., the Detroit Free Press and The Columbus Dispatch.

Cabluck, one of the photographers let go in Texas, has been with the AP for 40 years and was in John F. Kennedy?s presidential motorcade when Kennedy was shot in 1963, according to the Texas Tribune Web site.


-- Nielsen Business Media