Don’t know what to write? Put in some nice pictures
One of my main criticism with TV lies in its inherent (or believed to be inherent) need to make use of its multimedia (sound and visuals) capability. Movies sometimes make good and wonderful use of these possibilities (but are usually also better enjoyed on a big screen), while normal TV programmes often don’t.
Remaining solely in the news / information sector, that need can become a disadvantage, as the content gets subdued by an irrelevant, misleading or confusing combination of audio and visuals.
Newspaper, on the other hand, only transfer content visually. Thus even when a newspaper uses different visuals methods (like text and pictures) they don’t necessarily interfere, as they can be viewed subsequently instead of simultaneously. What’s more, a newspaper can use the visuals in accordance with the needs of the content.
I was even more disappointed, then, to find a prime example of a meaningless use of visuals in the current issue (No. 37) of the German weekly Die Zeit - a newspaper I avidly read, and which I value greatly.
Case in point: Their economy section features a series on rich people. The series opens with an article which describes the differences between old-money and newcomers, and touches also their different spending habits as well as the resulting social and economical impacts. That article is accompanied by a rather large picture, probably meant to draw people in:
Although not necessary, the picture is still fair game: The building shown is the casino in Monaco, which is a meeting point of rich people and gets featured prominently in the article itself.
As the article continues to the next page, an infographic is displayed. It shows the number of millionaires per country. Which seems to be a bit out of place, as the absolute number of millionaires and their distribution doesn’t matter to the article’s points, namely that there are more millionaires than before and that their assets are out-pacing normal economical growth. Nor does the distribution per country.
Yet it gets worse, as the same page also has a list of the ten richest people in the world, adjoint by their pictures, estimated assets and the industry sectors from which they’ve earned their fortunes. Still, both the infographic and the list offer information which is at least in some way related to the main topic.
Then there’s a a small article about a club in London, a club whose members emphasise family tradition and influence higher that mere assets:
The article has a small picture of the club’s location, which isn’t really necessary to the understanding of the content yet doesn’t distract.
The absolut low-point, however, comes from another article. It portraits an entrepreneur from China who is among the richest people in his country. The article itself is quite nice - it has some background on his life; information on his company; some critical voices about his staged behaviour, and more. And then there’s the large picture to the article, which shows two women dancing and is titled “night life in a noble club in China“:
So, maybe the picture’s there because the portrayed man owns some clubs? Or maybe because he enjoys partying? I don’t know, because there’s no mention of clubs or night life anywhere in the article. So I can only assume that the author found the life of a selfmade billionaire in communist China so boring he couldn’t write more about it. Or maybe the newspaper editors wanted to sex up the article by including a picture of partying women?
Who knows, but alas, what a waste of space.
