WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

Last week, we saw how some of the “worst offenders” explained the Osama bin Laden story with fictional graphics.

As soon as I started to post some tuitts in my Twitter account @GINER, I saw that many colleagues from many countries reacted in the same way, among them ny friend Alberto Cairo, the infographics editor of EPOCA magazine in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

With Alberto, we wrote “six basic rules” that must be observed to deliver real news with graphics.

Then I contacted Barry Sussman, an INNOVATION Senior Consultant that now serves as editor of the Harvard University Nieman Watchdog Project and he offered that website to post the “check-list” with a short article, and a first list with 58 colleagues from 22 countries immediately endorsed the statement.

Claude Erbsen in New York edited the “six rules” and Barry Sussman in Washington DC edited the full article.

A few minutes ago all this was posted at the Nieman Watchdog website with the same illustration that leads this post, as it fits the purpose and sense of this statement: the front page of the William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal “explaining” the news from Cuba.

And we included a few examples from some of the “worst offenders.”

Like this one from UOL in Brazil:

This from the Daily Mail in the UK:

This one from CBS News:

This one from ABC in Madrid:

This one from the Hindustan Times in India:

This one from NMA News in Taiwan:

Or this from JT France:

You can find an extensive selection with wise comments of Gert K Nielsen about some of the best and worst infographics in his blog VisualJournalism.

But, more important, we just wanted to stress five ideas:

• Facts ,not fiction, is what drives Journalism.
• Visual Journalism is not Show Business.
• Editors must lead this battle against fake information.
• Visual journalists must resist any pressure to deliver graphics “at any cost.”
• And infographics are not a substitute when we don’t have real information.

This what I learned from Alejandro Malofiej, Miguel Urabayen, Peter Sullivan, Mario Tascón, John Grimwade, Chiqui Esteban, Nigel Holmes or Javier Zarracina, and many of the best visual journalists of the world.

And we cannot accept less.

• If you agree with these convictions, please add your signature in the comments section of the Nieman Watchdog, spread the word between your newsrooms, and we will include your names in the next editions of this first wave of endorsements.

INNOVATION’s Chiqui Esteban leads the New Narratives department of lainformacion.com in Madrid, Spain.

The graphic work done with his small team (he and Carlos Gamez plus Sarah Potts, an intern) is astonishing.

They have the support of the Art Director Antonio Pasagali, video and web developers, HTML designers of lainformacion.com but they do 90% of the final work.

They use Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, Cinema 4d, Dreamweaver, Soundbooth, Premiere and Click2Map for Google Maps…

Chiqui and Carlos are fast like the best writers of the best newswire services.

They are quick, but accurate, and always focus on “the news behind the news” trying to explain, to find out, discover new angles and delivering not just facts but graphic ideas and fast quality journalism.

This is a 24/7 full time team and they are on permanent deadline mood.

Chiqui and Carlos have limited resources but unlimited creativity, and shows what you can do when you have real journalists.

Here you can review some of the work done during the last 12 months of lainformacion.com.

An amazing showcase of almost 400 pieces of first class visual journalism!

Keep in mind that lainformacion.com was founded by Mario Tascon, the most influential Spanish infographics journalist, a new pure digital media company that today has a new editor, Carlos Salas, a very visual journalist, founding editor of El Economista, the financial newspaper launched by INNOVATION, and one the Best Designed Newspapers of the World.

And more:

Chiqui has been able to lead all this effort and at the same time work with many INNOVATION clients around the world teaching and preaching the New Visual Journalism Gospel.

Follow his Spanish/English blog.

A must-read blog.

I am starting tomorrow in www.lainformacion.com an only 20-day long blog in Spanish about the launch of the new Apple tablet.

I will ended in San Francisco on January 27th when Steve Jobs presents the tablet.

In less than 24 hours, Mario Tascon, Vanesa Jimenez, Jorge Martin Luengo and Antonio Pasagali from Diximedia made the miracle.

What a team!

And thanks too, to Luis Grañena that will draw one superb caricature every day just for the blog.

See above the first one about Steve Jobs,

Rob Curley is a very nice guy.

I met him just once.

Last year, both of us were speakers at the same Canadian Newspaper Publishers conference.

After his terrific presentation, I invited him to run a “Day with Rob Curley” in our periodic Harvard one-day seminars for our best clients.

Unfortunately, his crazy job prevented any assurance about any specific date too much in advance, and the one-day seminar idea didn’t work even though he was willing to do it.

So today when I read the news of his departure from The Washington Post, I was very sad.

Here we have another online news pioneer leaving a first-class newspaper company at the time that the elephants need a lot of of Rob Curleys.

Minutes after I posted my “bad news” comment, I got a nice message from Rob wanting to talk.

And he called very soon to tell me the full story.

As I said to him, I am not interested in the inside politics of the Post, but in a more global and disturbing trend: why so many Rob Curleys are leaving big newspapers and going … to new “pure digital media projects” (like Mario Tascon from Prisacom, Gumersindo Lafuente from El Mundo or Juan Varela from ADN in Spain in the last few months).

The good news here is that Rob is not leaving the newspaper industry, and he has two interesting remarks:

First, at a small newspaper, you don’t have too many layers of bureaucracy and things are done and implemented on the spot.

He likes this.

He was raised in this culture and he expects this way of life in Las Vegas.

Second, if you do great things at a big paper, other papers will say: “Yes, it’s great but we don’t have the resources, talent and visionaries that the big guys have.”

So, going to the Las Vegas Sun, Rob told me, is going to be great because no one will have any excuse not to do it.

If the Las Vegas Sun can do it, anybody can do it …

Well, I said to Rob, if the Las Vegas Sun is a rich family-owned company that has just hired some of the most talented new media people in the country, then it is not the standard local U.S. newspaper company owned by the big publicly-traded newspaper chains that are killing print and online newsrooms.

And this is, again, the good news.

A local newspaper like the Las Vegas Sun can become the new mecca for the next generation of online news conquistadores.

When I told him that three years ago we presented his Kansas case in our INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS Global Report, Rob said: “Look, Juan, come to Las Vegas and in a few months you will be able to report about the most innovative online news operation in the country.”

And for this reason Rob is heading for the Far West.

So, good luck and God speed!