A picture can tell a thousand words

or so I have heard. Imagine reading a newspaper without any images in it. Pages upon pages of more or less dry retelling of the happenings of the world. It sounds dull. It probably would be dull. Thousands of words, just to create the same effect as a small collection of coloured ink on a piece of paper. The trouble occurs when the picture chosen for a given article does not in fact tell a thousand words; when the picture chosen is more of a light introduction to the topic. Or even just some filler material because the journalist is out if time and out of words. They have a deadline to work against, and probably a dozen different pieces to write before the end of the week. A mediocre article accompanied with a mediocre image, read the next day and then thrown in a bin at the end of the lunch break.

When I open a newspaper I expect to get, well, the news. I expect to get the news delivered to me in a way that I can understand and possibly relate to. I expect to get opinions in the commentaries and leaders, and I expect the information delivered to be accurate. What I don’t expect pages upon pages of advertising, half finished articles and copy-pastes of the big international news agencies. I tend to get the latter.

Whenever I hear about falling numbers of readers in the daily press I get this little voice in the back of my head going “We will combat the falling numbers with more focus on entertainment news and sports, add extra revenue from advertising and possibly cut a few positions in the journalist department.” To be honest I don’t care what celebrity it was this time who went with a too short skirt and no underwear. Or that a football player sprained his pinkie but thankfully will make the big match next Saturday – although he missed a training session and was rushed to the emergency room for a thorough x-ray examination. Those two stories? Five pages if you include a comment from the doctor doing the examination. And a couple more if you get someone saying the celebrity in question is a bad role model for the kids growing up today. Then an additional page if you can quote a given b-celebrity saying: -No I would not go without underwear in that short a skirt, and I sincerely doubt it will become commonplace in the next year or so. Meanwhile the two elections in Europe and the sinking of a ferry in Indonesia get half a page maximum spread out over the five pages of international news. Do they really wonder why people stop reading their papers?