We’ve got a picture problem, it’s getting worse and you can be part of the solution.
In the old days newspapers didn’t worry that much about pictures. The papers, especially broadsheets, were grainy, text heavy products that almost delighted in being difficult to read.
Technology and design advances and competition from the internet means the pressure to have attractive looking pages — of the sort that advertisers might want to sit next to — is higher than ever.
At the same time, picture budgets are being slashed (along with most other budgets). So quite often the very best pix, the ones we’d choose by choice, are too expensive to use.
This problem gets exacerbated by the high number of flaks who send out pix where the copyright is owned by someone else – often another publication.
Two thoughts.
1) Think harder about pix in relation to any story. We can take care of the words.
2) Check who owns the copyright before you email it over. The headaches and cost created when you don’t are a cause of some terrible language at your expense.