There is one side of me that would say to run the photos. After all, they really do tell a story. A person who has a fence post through his cheek tells a powerful story, as does the one taken on Fat Tuesday in Seattle. A story is not even needed, the photo tells it all. In that respect, they are good photos.
On the other hand, these are photos designed to make people cringe. They tell the most gruesome stories out there, and will no doubt elicit the most extreme response from readers. A standard newspaper is not design to disgust people, just inform them.
I will have to say that the latter wins out in my reasoning to not run the photos. A picture usually does tell a better story than words, but in this case, the person can choose to stop reading if anything gets too graphic. A photo does not offer those choices. Once a person sees it, it is in their mind for good.
This choice would stay the same if the photos were local or otherwise. In fact, if the photos were local, my choice would be even more inclined to not run them, just because a whole community does not need to see one of its members in a position like that. It's not protecting them per se, but it does minimize harm in the community, which is always a helpful thing.
These photos are really unrunnable anywhere in the paper. I don't want to do that to the readers of a paper. The only photo that I would even consider to run is the one with the dog killed by a car. There is a dog killed in there, not a human. I'm still not inclined to run it, but that is the one I would even consider the least. It is still not a line I would wish to cross though.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
The wonders of The Associated Press
Okay, I'll be the first to admit that this post's title is probably lavishing a bit too much praise on just one news organization. After all, it is just one news organization, with reporters just like any other (albeit, however, with many, many more reporters all over the world).
Still, I will say the Associated Press is always coming in handy in one way or another. First of all, it makes sure all information is consistent in papers who run it. A reader in Taiwan is going to get the same information as a person in New York. There is something nice about that, and the wire service can also fill pages where a paper does not have enough content to do so.
I guess this came into my head on Tuesday night as I was night editor of The Daily Illini. The thing that made me talk about this was not the amount of stories we can pull off the wire, but rather how often a story was updated.
The big story right now, of course, is the financial crisis. When I came in to start at 5 p.m., the story was at its 18th write through of the day. During news conference, I said I would pull the story at the absolute latest time so the story could be the most up-to-date.
By 9:45, when I pulled the story, it was at its 24th write through. In 4 hours, 45 minutes, there were six updates to the story.
The Associated Press is a great example, at least to me, about how a breaking news story should be handled. More newsrooms should strive to update their online stories more often as more news comes in. It would make the readers come back more, while really painting as good of a picture of what is going on as possible.
What The Associated Press does is not impossible to do in a lot of newsrooms (most have reporters or editors there all day, it can be done), and it would just make a newsroom look more thorough. If it did that, though, it would be.
Still, I will say the Associated Press is always coming in handy in one way or another. First of all, it makes sure all information is consistent in papers who run it. A reader in Taiwan is going to get the same information as a person in New York. There is something nice about that, and the wire service can also fill pages where a paper does not have enough content to do so.
I guess this came into my head on Tuesday night as I was night editor of The Daily Illini. The thing that made me talk about this was not the amount of stories we can pull off the wire, but rather how often a story was updated.
The big story right now, of course, is the financial crisis. When I came in to start at 5 p.m., the story was at its 18th write through of the day. During news conference, I said I would pull the story at the absolute latest time so the story could be the most up-to-date.
By 9:45, when I pulled the story, it was at its 24th write through. In 4 hours, 45 minutes, there were six updates to the story.
The Associated Press is a great example, at least to me, about how a breaking news story should be handled. More newsrooms should strive to update their online stories more often as more news comes in. It would make the readers come back more, while really painting as good of a picture of what is going on as possible.
What The Associated Press does is not impossible to do in a lot of newsrooms (most have reporters or editors there all day, it can be done), and it would just make a newsroom look more thorough. If it did that, though, it would be.
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