Aaron Brown held up an International Herald Tribune with color on the front the other night, so I wondered if they'd finally made the leap. They have!

They've added a bit of content as well, including more coverage of the media industry and excerpts of news and commentary from leading newspapers worldwide. They're also not changing the name to something awful like The New York Times International Edition. That's good, 'cause I really dig the illo in their flag:

>Venerable IHT retooling to attract readers, advertisers [Newspapers & Technology]

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The feedback page of Kenneth Irby's Poynter article is still missing any response from him to the questions posed there about his seeming advocacy of the "distortion" of images. But it's only been a day and I'm sure he's a busy guy, so I'll cut him some slack. However, from that page, Spanish journalist Juan Varela points to an interesting piece he wrote on his weblog on how Spanish and foreign press handled the images of March 11. It's in Spanish, but here, courtesy of the magical Babelfish and my own woefully inadequate language skills, is a nice bit about the manipulation of the Guerrero photo.

The English press has reflected on its behavior and the conclusions are pathetic. For the deputy editor for news of The Guardian, Paul Johnson, the photograph came "just in the margins of what we could use on the front page." The margins of what the readers of the progressive British newspaper would tolerate.

Johnson defends the conversion of the red blood to gray stone because it did not eliminate any element of the photo. An intellectual arabesque in the great British tradition: to mask things without making them disappear. Victorian reflex or political correctness? It was a peculiar decision when the newspaper's own ethical code indicates that all altered photographs must be identified as such.

At the conservative Daily Telegraph they're much clearer. "It's a question of taste. ... You clean up an image if you feel it does not change the context," says its picture editor, Bob Bodman.

In tumultuous times, with obscenities and violence all around, it is peculiar the importance of a leg: only a piece of bleeding flesh. Around it was death and true pain. The mystery of who was responsible and the whole tragedy beginning for the victims and their families.

And so many people repairing one leg.

>The pain and truth of the image [Periodistas 21]

Kenny Irby's Poynter article on the Madrid photo manipulation has been posted. It's basically a roundup of how different newspapers handled this and other gruesome photos from that day. I must say I'm quite disappointed that he didn't give the ethical issues involved in digitally manipulating photographs more than just a fly-by. And in discussing options open to editors when confronted with graphic photos, he says this:

• Distortion of the picture is another choice. That is, you can subtract and/or add editorial content within the frame of the photographic composition.

I'm not sure exactly what he means by "distortion" and "subtract and/or add editorial content," but I find that a bit disturbing. Is he actually saying that Photoshopping images is a legitimate option? I hope not.

After Fark linked to my original Madrid posts, there was a lot of discussion by "normal people" (i.e. readers) in the Fark comments and other weblogs and message boards. Most of them were appalled at the manipulation and said the newspapers should have picked another photo or run the image as it was. They seemed to get that news photographs should reflect the truth. Why can't some "journalists?"

In episodes like this, the trustworthiness of documentary photojournalism is at stake, and I think the Poynter Institute needs to give that a bit more consideration.

>"Beyond Taste: Editing Truth" [Poynter Online]

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So, who do ya think got their face on the most North American papers Friday?

President Bush? Nope!
John Kerry and his partyin' Democratic pals? Not quite!
Tony Blair and newly lovable strongman Muammar Ghadafi? You'd think so, but you'd be wrong!

It's ...

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The results of NPPA's Best of Photojournalism awards are coming in. The editing awards are the most design-related, including a first-place for the Detroit Free-Press in the Newspaper Front Page category.

>The Best of Photojournalism 2004 [NPPA]

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Goes to the Winnipeg Sun:

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New York's gonna get another freebie tabloid sometime in May, apparently. This one from Metro International, a European outfit with free tabloids in 34 cities, including Boston and Philly.

>Another free paper on the way [New York Daily News]

Lots of folks did the Rumsfeld-Powell-Albright-Cohen four-mugs-and-quotes thing for Wednesday's 9/11 story. This one seemed the most compelling to me.

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In case you were wondering, when you run a little niche weblog that noodles along on daily traffic that barely reaches into the low three figures, and then you suddenly get linked by a behemoth of a site, it looks something like this:

And thanks to the fine folks at Verve Hosting who got me back up in good time when the Farking slammed one of their servers.

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Thanks to Michael Whitley, our favorite new packrat at the LA Times, we can show that the Washington Post did indeed run the undoctored Madrid image. As their lead image.

And so did the LA Daily News.

The Belgians at Gazet Van Antwerpen, however, had a very British-like failure of nerve.

Something to remember the next time you hear somebody say that the European media don't sanitize the truth like those squeamish Americans.

Update: As I mentioned earlier, I've been waiting for the indignation over this whole sordid affair. Over at Visualeditors.com, Cavendish comes through quite well. He also mentions that Kenny Irby is working on something for Poynter Online.

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Alert reader Brian left a comment in the El Pais post below noting that the British papers "cleaned up" (read: removed) the severed limb in Pablo Torres Guerrero's photo and defended themselves later. The Guardian has the scoop (Note: The Guardian's requiring registration now). Here are the photos:

The original photo as it ran in El Pais. The bloody limb is visible in the bottom left of the photo.

The Guardian changed the limb to an unobtrusive gray.

The Telegraph removed it entirely.

The Times also removed it.

The Telegraph's picture editor, Bob Bodman, said:

"It's a question of taste. At the end of the day our readers know there has been a horrific explosion. You clean up an image if you feel it does not change the context - in this case had that object been at the side we would have cropped it. It didn't really add anything to the picture."

Even David Viggers, senior pictures editor at Reuters, which distributed the picture, doesn't seem to be too worked up about it:

"I wouldn't have removed it myself, although I can understand why some people have chosen to do so. It didn't alter the context of the image."

Well. Those Brits do have some different standards. I just can't see that happening here. At least not any newsroom I've worked in. You might find yourself all over Romenesko in the morning. I seem to remember a pretty big stink over the Post-Dispatch's disappearing Coke can and National Geographic's magical moving pyramids. It's not a long walk from there to Brian Walski.

So where's the hooplah about this on our end of the Atlantic? If these sorts of things erode the credibility of the news photograph, shouldn't we be raising a bit of a ruckus? The sheer volume of vein-popping e-mail would crash Daniel Okrent's computer if the New York Times did this. True, it is "over there," but does that really matter anymore?

By the way, for the "Are American newspapers too squeamish?" file, someone on this message board says the Washington Post ran the photo undoctored on the front page, but I can't find an image of that day's page to verify. Any Posties out there confirm that?

>Editors 'clean up' bomb photo [The Guardian]

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Here's a freaky occurrence from Newspagedesigner. The Virginian-Pilot and the Northern Virginia Daily, about 400 miles apart, came up with eerily similar Spain centerpieces on March 12.

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They've set up a website for this fall's SND workshop in San Jose. A few funky new things on tap:

TOP 25 MOMENTS IN DESIGN Tim Harrower asked the world's top designers what events were most important to the profession. Hear their answers Saturday, Oct. 2.

TRADING PAPERS The San Jose Mercury News and the Los Angeles Times traded designers for three days. Were they crazy? Find out on Friday, Oct. 1.

GRAPHICS IRON CHEF Vector wizards, 3-D experts and illustration masters go head to head. Cheer the victorious and mock the vanquished Friday, Oct. 1.

Now if they can get Mangan to come over on his lunch break and tell us The Future Doesn't Need You, Either, we'll have a show!

>SNDSJ [via Kenney Marlatt]

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I spent some time yesterday collecting various Spanish front pages to post, only to find late in the evening that the fine folks at SND-E had already put me to shame. So just go there. At press time they didn't have Bilbao's Gara, but they probably will soon, as they're updating often. Spain's journalists did some fine work in the face of the horror. Go and bear witness.

>11-M [SND-E]

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The San Francisco Examiner's new owner has given it a bit of a new look. Hard to tell from just a couple front pages, and I haven't seen it regularly in a while, but does it not look a bit like that Roger Black pre-Fang look? It looks like they've re-elevated Cheltenham back to a main display face rather than a subhed face. Maybe that's it. And the rules around the bylines.

You can see today's front page here. And if you hack the date in that URL, you can find a lot of others, too.

Update: Cavendish beat me to it by a few minutes at the Visual Editing board, but he agrees!

"It looks like they just went back to the Roger Black-era type and put it into a tab format."

He also posts a page from the 2002 redesign.

>San Francisco Examiner
>S.F. Examiner boosts its pages [San Francisco Chronicle]

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It's always a challenge for the sports folks on days of tragedy. Spain has several sports dailies. Here's how three of them handled Thursday's events.

El Mundo Deportivo went with a black reverse, some news photos and a photo of the beloved hometown F.C. Barcelona team taking a moment of silence.

AS put a black band, a news photo, an F.C.B. moment-of-silence photo and the beginning of an essay on the cover.

Marca does a fine job. They changed the signature red M to black with a single tear. They added a news photo and four moment-of-silence photos and some well chosen words. The main hed: "We cried together, we will win together." The simple, poetic top decks say (pardon my rudimentary Spanish):

Today there is only a place for revulsion.
Today we must remember the victims.
Today the message is of freedom and life.
Today sport will remain in the background.

Very nice.

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Here's tomorrow's El Pais (click on the picture for a bigger view). Assuming these links don't rot too quick, you can download a PDF of the El Pais cover here, the inside 43 bombing pages here, or the whole 96 page paper here. (Note: That's a 20MB file.) There's an 8-page English edition here.

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El Mundo has covers of some of the extra editions that Spanish newspapers have published in the wake of today's horrific attacks in Madrid. And at El Pais you can download PDF's of their extra edition. And both El Mundo and El Pais appear to have suspended their usual subscription requirements, so you can see all their coverage, including their Flash graphics.

Update: The Madrid daily ABC also published an 18-page extra, which you can download here.

>Masacre en Madrid [El Mundo]
>EDICIÓN ESPECIAL DIARIO EL PAÍS [El Pais]

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Note: This was posted here earlier.

I've been planning to follow up on my SND contest numbers post and the issue of photography awards. And now I've been goosed by this discussion at visualeditors.com. Maybe this has been beaten to death in Design mag or somewhere, and I've just missed it. (I'll confess that I have, at times, been a bit off-and-on with my SND membership, depending on my employer's willingness to pony up the scratch, my own solvency or just my general mood about Life, the Universe and Everything.) But it seems it might be worth a wider discussion. Especially now that we got this shiny new internet thingie.

Anyway, I was a bit surprised by the 2003 photo numbers (5 percent of award categories, 17 percent of all awards and 58 percent of Gold awards). For comparison, here are some quick numbers from the SND databases and annuals.

Percentage of SND awards that were for photography:
1985: 8.9
1986: 6
1988: 9.2
1989: 8.6
1990: 6.4
1991: 6.8
1992: 6.2
1993: 10.5
1994: 7
1995: 7.4
1996: 6.3
1997: 4.4
1998: 5.7
1999: 5.8
2000: 11
2001: 7.4
2002: 11
2003: 17

A bit of an uptick lately, but does that really mean anything? Who knows! Maybe just the bounce of the ball or a particularly good photo year, as Steve Cavendish said.

Regardless of the numbers, there's a question here. It is a design contest. Should there be photography awards in it?

But would you ditch all the categories? Or keep the photo series stuff? Or photo illustrations?

First, let me say I'm a big fan of our photo pals, and surely we could not do what we do without them. (We'd get sick of big type treatments pretty dang fast.) I often stand in awe of what they do. And I'm certainly not the only one who's been inspired by great photography to do better design.

But as is perpetually the case these days, newsroom budgets are tight. I suspect that most editors don't enter every page their staff throws their way in January, but edit down the entries to the ones they think have the best shot. So one could understand how designers and artists might, in the deep, deep dark of night, slightly begrudge a chunk of the limited pie going to the photogs. They do have their own big ol' contest. Not to mention their own Pulitzer categories.

I'm taking the coward's way out at the moment and saying I'm really not sure yet where I come down on this. But I'd like to hear what y'all think. Also, I'd be interested in whatever institutional SND memory there may be out there on past discussions about this.

From the referrer logs today comes news that Robb Montgomery, deputy news editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, has set up a "visual editors discussion board."

This forum is designed to give a voice to the community of journalists who edit, design, layout, photograph, picture edit, produce graphics, create illustrations or work with people who do this type of work at newspapers, magazines and Web sites.

There are many organizations that support, train and reward these journalists, but until now there hasn't been a common exchange for members to discuss the state of the art.

We hope this humble board will serve you in your career — please pipe in with your thoughts, comments and suggestions.

The discussions are starting. Go thou and do likewise!

>Visual editors discussion board

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The LA Times continues its contest tear with photographer Carolyn Cole being named Newspaper Photographer of the Year. They also took the Angus McDougall Overall Excellence in Editing Award for Newspapers and a stack of 19 others, the most of any newspaper. Time's James Nachtwey was named Magazine Photographer of the Year.

>Sixty-First Annual Pictures of the Year International Competition [POY]
>Times Photographers Honored [LAT]

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I hear there's been a shakeup at the Miami Herald. Graphics Editor Hiram Henriquez has resigned to go to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. He was given 20 minutes to clean out his desk and skedaddle out of the building. The legendary and always energetic Nuri Ducassi has also quit. A pretty big deal, I'd say. She's been quite a force at the Herald for years. And apparently the loss of Henriquez decimates the graphics staff. Word is they've been run off by the new AME.

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Jeffrey Dvorkin, NPR's ombuds-dude said this week:

Some NPR listeners' heads were scratched after hearing CBS' Dan Rather in a recent Democratic debate. He asked whether a candidate has enough "Elvis" to get elected. Mr. Rather's often obscure Texas locutions are known and even occasionally admired in broadcasting circles. But it moved listener Nancy Johnson to write:

I was sleepy this morning but not sleepy enough to miss Morning Edition crediting Dan Rather with the analysis that Kerry might not have enough "Elvis" to get elected. The actual originator of this is Molly Ivins, who wrote an entire column about the field of Democratic candidates some months ago, and whether any of them had any Elvis. Dan Rather just pilfered the idea... Don't your news writers keep up on what is out there?

Well, of course they don't. It's NPR! They're listening to obscure Kazhakstani folk music! Plus they're busy working on that five-part series on the endangered East African six-winged butterfly! With long stretches of unspoiled nature audio of elephants breathing and such!

But anyway, Rather may have gotten it from Ivins, but apparently nobody involved was redneck enough to notice that Ivins' concept of "Elvisness" is suspiciously similar to the classic Mojo Nixon tune "Elvis is Everywhere." (She's had a few problems with this sort of "borrowing" thing before).

Here's Ivins last August:

My early take on Kerry was that he has gravitas – sumbitch about bent over double with gravitas – but that he has no Elvis. Minus-zero on the Elvis Scale was my first read. No point in nominating some good and worthy candidate, like Fritz Mondale or Michael Dukakis, if they got no Elvis. The object is to get these people elected. Can't get elected without a soupçon of Elvis.

(Oh, Molly! Mixin' up "sumbitch" in the same graf as "soupçon"! How do you do it?)

Here's Mojo Nixon in about 1987:

Elvis is everywhere, man!
He's in everything.
He's in everybody...
Elvis is in your jeans.
He's in your cheesburgers
Elvis is in Nutty Buddies!
Elvis is in your mom!
He's in everybody.
He's in the young, the old,
the fat, the skinny,
the white, the black
the brown and the blue
people got Elvis in 'em too
Elvis is in everybody out there.
Everybody's got Elvis in them!
Everybody except one person that is...
Yeah, one person!
The evil opposite of Elvis.
The Anti-Elvis
Anti-Elvis got no Elvis in 'em,
lemme tell ya.
Michael J. Fox has no Elvis in him.
And Elvis is in Joan Rivers
but he's trying to get out, man!
He's trying to get out!

Obviously, NPR needs a little more diversity on its staff. Time for a little affirmative action for the oppressed Redneck class!

>Jeffrey Dvorkin, NPR ombudsman [NPR]
>Who Can Beat President Doofus? [The Progressive]
>"Elvis is Everywhere" [Mojo Nixon]

Here are some interesting numbers culled from the database of SND winners:

Number of categories: 182
Percentage of categories that were for photography: 5
Percentage of awards that were for photography: 17
Percentage of Gold awards that were for photography: 58
The number of judges (excluding the five World's Best Designed Newspaper judges): 21
The number of judges who work for newspapers: 13
The number of judges whose newspapers won no awards: 4
Circulation of the smallest paper to win a Gold award (Journal News, Spencerville, Ohio): 2,200
Number of other awards the World's Best Designed Newspapers won:

Puls Biznesu: 0
Upsala Nya Tidning: 0
Glasgow Herald: 1
Independent on Sunday: 6
Récord: 20

Number of times my name is misspelled: 1*

*No worries on the name, SND buddies! I'm impressed you can give us all that info at all. Good job!

SND finally got their pesky database working. So go take a gander at the winners!

>25th Edition Winners [SND]

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