WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

(Graphic from The Daily Telegraph. Click to see it bigger)

A British Airways plane crash-landed at Heathrow airport today, slightly injuring 18 passengers and triggering an inquiry into why the Boeing 777 flying in from Beijing landed short of the runway.

(Graphic from The Daily Mail)

The Times of London reports the dramatic moment:

With just seconds to go before landing, Peter Burkill, captain of flight BA038, realised that his Boeing 777 was not going to make the runway rushing towards them. It was 12.42pm. The flight, which had left Beijing 12 hours earlier, was on time. A minute from touchdown at Heathrow, Captain Burkill and his co-pilot discovered that the aircraft was dropping faster than the standard three-degree gentle descent. There appeared to have been a sudden, catastrophic loss of power affecting both engines. The cockpit electronics may also have failed, leaving only the battery powered airspeed indicator and altimeter still operating. In the next few seconds, the captain and his co-pilot would need all the skill that they had accumulated in more than 20 years of flying to save their own lives, those of the 14 crew, passengers and potentially hundreds more in homes and schools under the flight path.

There have already been calls by witnesses to give him “a medal the size of a frying pan.”

A chartered BA Boeing 747 due to fly Prime Minister Gordon Brown to Beijing for an official visit was held up as a result of the incident.

UPDATE: I asked INNOVATION consultant Michael Agar in London, Graphics Editor of the Independent on Sunday, his opinion about these “old-fashioned” graphics and here is his response:

Its seriously depresses me!

The state of Infographics in British journalism has gotten so bad (excluding Guardian, Observer, Independent on Sunday and the Times), that the gulf between the rest of the world and other newspapers in the UK is growing wider and wider.

Many times graphic artists – rather than graphic reporters – rely on the text to explain, rather than developing the visual narrative.

Only the above newspapers have created, innovated and found new ways to report breaking news.

The same old tricks

Uninspiring techniques

Poor journalism

Unless editors, management and infographic departments realise and understand this, readers will turn the page, and turn off!

Amen.