Naming NamesI have to say, after looking at the front page of the New York Times this morning, I was a little disappointed with the front page. The story itself, "Report Ties Star Players to Baseball's 'Steroids Era' is a good story about the frequent usage and problems with steriods among baseball players, however the graphics really bored me. While this is a great use of infographics, especially with the line graphs of each player's increased home runs or E.R.A. stats around the time they were taking these drugs, I wouldn't expect to see this on a front page.
How do you all feel about a front page with a graph or chart instead of an eye-catching image? At first, I honestly thought the paper was mixed up and the Sports section somehow got put on top of everything else by mistake. The story is also on the front page of the sports section, with a much more vivid image of all of the players accused of taking growth horomones and steroids that compile on top of each other to form a huge baseball bat. While this is more of a feature image, I almost wish something like this was on the front page and the inforgraphics were saved for inside the story. As far as the writing goes, the story is very well written and it is clear NY Times has done its research. They have copies of checks written out to Kirk Radomski for "supplements" with lots of other supporting evidence. The entire packaged is laid out well with lots of stories about suspected trainers, questionable teams and a story about Bud Selig, commissioner of MLB and what he plans to do about this issue.
But if you were not an avid sports fan, would the front page be enough to make you keep reading? Or would an image have been better? I personally think this particular graph should not have been used on the front page. When is it ok to use infographics on the front page for a story and when is it not? Is it ok for the infographics to stand alone as it did in this case of the NYT, or would it have worked better if it accompanied a story?
3 comments:
Personally, I don't know what the New York Times was doing with this front page. An infographic? That's the best the NY Times can do on its front page covering the nation's lead news story?
The infographic should've been bumped to the inside and the picture from the sports section or a similar picture should've been on the front. A well-selected picture is more catchy than a grid full of numbers.
How about the cutlines to those photos. The link you included to the story had a picture of Mitchell, an ex-senator with the cutline, " George K. Mitchell, an ex-senator, helped bring peace to Northern Ireland and led the investigation into Olympic bribery.’ The picture seems pretty irelevant for the NYT's.
The picture under that one includes a photo of some man carrying the Mitchell report. What a boring picture. I'm not a huge sports enthusiast, but surely they could find some more attention grabbing visuals other than pictures of ex-senators, strangers carrying 400-page books, and grids.
Interesting responses, guys. Halley made some really good points, I think, about the relevance and lack of interest in the photos. But I disagree about the graphics. To me, a graphic showing how steroid use affects ERA or slugging percentage includes more information than some file photograph showing a player from a game last summer. I already know what Andy Pettitte looks like, but I didn't know how his ERA might have been affected by steroid use. I do think, however, that the Times could have come up with a more compelling form of graphic. It took me a minute or two to figure out exactly how to read the graphics, and I'm accustomed to the Times' graphic style. In my opinion, even the Times fairly sophisticated audience shouldn't have to work that hard.
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