I got several messages and comments after the Friday post about the massive use of this picture by AP’s David Karp.
But this is not a design issue.
It’s about the daily dilemma of newspapers around the world.
They still concentrate their coverage on yesterday’s news.
Not on the news of today or tomorrow, but on old news that already has been watched, read and heard many hours before.
So, this picture is not the issue. Just like the repetitive and trivial coverage of what the big boys are doing to transfer their mistakes to all of us, the U.S. taxpayers, is not the issue newspapers should be focusing on.
The issue here is you and me, the readers.
How this incredible crisis will affect us.
Readers were expecting advice, not long, boring stories about the Masters of the Universe, the Wall Street crooks and other thiefs.
What should you do with your savings?
What should you do with your mortgage?
What should you do with your retirement plan?
What should you do with your bank account?
What should you do with your credit card?
And not wire-service news about the WHAT (that I’m sure many of us don’t understand, including these reporters and editors), but about the WHY and the WHAT’S NEXT.
Newspapers will survive if they have exclusive content.
If they provide exclusive advice.
If they deliver solutions, and not just problems.
If they find the news, and not just report on it.
More news behind the news.
More analysis.
More insightful information.
More quality, and less quantity of dead news.
The front pages from last week were not the solution.
Martin Huisman, the art director of the excellent Flemish newspaper ‘De Morgen’ sent me a message with their front page, which was different in design, but not in content.
As he says:
We were faced with the same challenge as so many newspapers, but tried a journalistic approach in giving the hard facts.
The result doesn’t look like a clone.
Seeing your blog entry, I just felt like sharing a design solution based on journalism, which is not only possible, but creates all kinds of design opportunities.
Question is: would it sell in the US?
Fortunately for me, it does in Belgium.
My friend Jay Small commented in his blog:
I agree.
Few in American journalism take on the challenge of explaining a story this severe and complex in terms that would be truly useful to everyday people that don’t happen to be economists.
Exceptions? Yeah. One or two. But none are evident in Juan Antonio’s gallery of so-so-ness.
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