Grzegorz Piechota is right.
These front pages speak for themselves.
The same picture everywhere.
Clone journalism, again and again.
COMMODITY NEWS, COMMODITY PICTURES, COMMODITY NON-JOURNALISM
Published by September 19th, 2008 in General.17 Responses to “COMMODITY NEWS, COMMODITY PICTURES, COMMODITY NON-JOURNALISM”
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I think a lot of the blame for the cloning is the AP monolith. There are no options. The AP doesn’t even do much of its own reporting anymore. How many photos did it provide? As for providing content about what it means to us real people, there are about 10-20 papers in the country capable at this point of providing the analysis of this thing that we need at that level. How many of them will send their stories to AP? We’re at its mercy.
Another issue is the very culture of the business right now, at least as it exists in America. Staffs have been cut well into the bone — forget TO the bone. The leaders of the business are lopping off the head to cure the headache, and it cannot continue. Sadly, a lot of papers feel like they have no choice but to take the easy way out.
We know the problems. How do we solve them?
Thanks.
i find it cheap to put this fronts together and say it was a confortable solution. i have to disagree. they might look the same. but papers are designed, at least the pilot, that i know, to satisfy the need of their readers to know all about it. they are not designed for pdf or jpg collectors. i agree with the picture choice, shows desolation of a worker of one of the companies involved. i don’t see a problem with it. our readers don’t care about other papers.
it’s easy to judge after the bull has passed. how this critic of clone journalist can defend an alternative front with the time to do it live.
’sometimes’ you have to serve your readers and not the design blogger community. i think our readers got all they needed in a very complete way.
Eleuve,
You’re missing Juan Antonio’s point completely. It’s not about the picture. Never mind that all those papers use the same picture. It’s about the fact that every one of them reports on what happened: there’s a credit crisis. There’s a recession. YES! We - the readers - all know that! Anything we see or read has told us that for the last two weeks! Juan’s point is that no newspaper - or very few - have published answers to the “WHY?” and “what’s next?” questions. Ordinary people - the ones that have some saving moneys in funds but aren’t “stock market guru’s” - want to know what’s going to happen to their savings, to their well earned money they put in funds on the advise of banks. Why did this happen and what should they do now? If A paper would tell them something in that direction (no one is that naïf to expect anyone is going to give THE solution; but something of a solution or guide to limit the damage would be a good start…. it would be a paper that people actually read (as opposed to a paper that people buy but throw away half of it without reading anyway).
Also, your point that your readers don’t care on what other papers have as picture and so it doesn’t matter that others have the same picture stands any ground only for your SUBSCRIBERS. NOT YOUR SINGLE-COPY SALES readers. Imagine a reader going to he news-stand in the morning and seeing all the papers next to each other… which newspaper would stand out and get his/her attention? RIGHT, the one that’s different; the one that has a different picture than all the rest of the papers! That has EVERYTHING TO DO WIH “SERVING YOUR READERS” as YOU like to describe it and NOTHING with “serving the design community”. Also, Juan Antonio’s whole point on newspapers answering the “WHY?” and “WHAT’s NEXT?” questions has - AS SUCH - nothing to do with design, but more with the editorial content/quality of your newspaper.
Best regards,
Tom
I am sorry my named appeared as eleuve, my name is Luis Vilches, and I work for The Virginian-Pilot
I am very happy to have this conversation.
I had the chance to review the front of the Pilot that day. And it’s true that it lacks of some of the content that would calm the insecurity of the every reader, including myself. But as I can read on it it tells me, ‘above the fold’ that getting credit is likely to be harder, that if I don’t have more than a $100.000 in the bank I don’t have to worry too much, and if I am an investor I should avoid panic. And then, below the fold “Is your money secure? Will credit dry up? Is it time to sell? Read on”
So i guess my point is being misunderstood.
Sometimes we have to distill the best we can with the best we have, and for the most part of the ‘meltdown’ package, it was AP. And then our financial writer crafted a Q&A.
I hate to see clone journalism as much as everybody does. But my point was that to get all the fronts with the same picture and put them in the same bag, and then say ‘it’s all the same!’ was cheap. Because it’s not true. To say that, you have hold some papers in your hands and see if you are satisfied. It’s hard for me to criticize without holding a paper, the whole deal of buying it or picking it up from your driveway and sitting down to read it.
Luis
Thank you to all for these interesting points.
I didn’t make any specific reference to any newspaper, but I am glad to know that the V-P included what Luis tell us.
Excellent!
As I said in the last posts, I am sure that some newspapers did it better than the rest.
And I am looking for some of these examples and samples.