Some corporate logos have stood the test of time. Coca Cola’s iconic red script and General Electric’s GE-in-a-circle have been around since the late 1800s. But Betty Crocker sure doesn’t look like she used to back in 1927. And NBC’s logo has gone from xylophone to peacock to snake to giant N and back again since [...]
Too many TV stories use graphics as filler, when there’s no obvious video available to cover a track. Full screens of text and numbers aren’t very attractive but they’re better than a black hole, right? If that’s how you’ve thought about graphics in the past, you need to think again, especially when it comes to [...]
More and more news organizations are creating interactive graphics that help users explore and understand their worlds. Some are pretty basic, others are more visually appealing, but all serve the same function of bringing data to life. On the hunt for some new examples, I searched a Twitter chat last week and found a boatload, [...]
Journalists are notorious for hating anything to do with math. If we’d been any good with numbers, I often joke, we might have chosen a different career. But it’s essential for today’s journalists to get comfortable working with data, and the good news is that more and more of them are. What’s changed? For one [...]
Forgive me for tooting my own horn, but I’m pleased to announce the publication of the second edition of my book, Advancing the Story: Broadcast Journalism in a Multimedia World, co-authored with Deb Wenger. It’s available now from CQ Press or Amazon, and we hope you’ll check it out. What’s different this time around? The new [...]
A story based on paper documents or computer records can pose a challenge for television journalists. There’s nothing visual for them to work with so the first resort is often to call for graphics. No matter how attractive your base art is, using full-screen bullet points can bring a story to a halt. And that’s not the only problem with text-heavy graphics.
How do you make a complex issue like health care or the financial meltdown comprehensible? Graphics can help, and they don’t have to be elaborate. ABC News Reporter John Hendren used cartoon drawings to explain how “toxic assets” at banks are like rotten apples at a fruit stand. The analogy helped to clarify the problem [...]
For sheer emotional impact, nothing rivaled the pictures. Few people who were anywhere near a television set a year ago this month will ever forget the sight of a commercial jet slamming into the World Trade Center, live. Television has the power to take viewers where they cannot go, telling stories with pictures and sound [...]
Television newscasts these days are replete with graphics, in part because new, inexpensive technologies have made it relatively easy for even the smallest newsrooms to produce them. There has been little research, however, to determine the effectiveness of different types of graphics in helping viewers understand and remember what they see on the air. A [...]
By Deborah Potter and Tom Grimes Watch television news these days, especially on cable, and you’re likely to see more words than pictures. The graphic look pioneered by CNN Headline News years ago is now widely imitated. Jerry Seinfeld, for one, doesn’t like it. “Don’t these idiots who run the news networks understand?” he asks [...]