Charles Apple

We get excited when graphics geeks get love in print.

It doesn’t happen often. But when it does — boy, do they deserve it.

Which was why we were delighted Saturday morning when the wonderful ‘bots that compile our Google alerts sent us this nice quote from Terry Orme, managing editor for News and Business at The Salt Lake Tribune:

…Orme sees graphics from the perspective of a person who has to weave all parts of the story together:

“Sometimes, elements of stories can’t be conveyed with words, at least not very effectively,” Orme says. “When you are describing the process of boring holes through a mountain to reach trapped miners, it works much better to relate that information visually. When you are telling readers about mountain bumps, and how pressure from 1,800 feet of rock causes a mine’s walls - not the ceiling - to collapse, well, that’s a picture, not a paragraph.

“In telling the story of the Crandall Canyon mine collapse, graphics are a key element. They allow you to quickly profile the six men trapped below. They allow you to give readers a scannable, digestible history of the events of the last two weeks. Most important, they communicate the complicated forces at work underground and the unimaginably difficult task of finding these men alive.”

It came from a column by Connie Coyne, the Tribune’s reader advocate.

More? Glad you asked:

Graphics Editor Todd Adams explains, “There are some stories - like the Crandall Canyon mine collapse - that beg for some visual reference in people’s minds. But a lot of readers don’t have any visual reference; they’ve never been in a mine. So it’s incumbent upon visual journalists, such as our graphic artists, to give readers a visual reference with which to ’see’ the story.”

The pressure to produce good work fell not only on reporters, editors and photographers:

“These images were especially critical during the early days of the mine collapse because there were no video images or photographs, obviously, from inside the mine. Sometimes graphics provide the only visual reference available. Other times, the graphic complements offer a more complete picture of a story,” Adams says.

Two graphics from early in the mine
collapse story. As always, click on the
thumbnail for a larger view.
—

And a big story like the mine story seeds more cooperation among newsroom departments, Adams notes:

“Creating graphics of mine disasters requires a well-coordinated newsroom effort; after all, not many graphic artists have been inside a mine, either,” he says. “But the artists obtain a frame of reference, if you will, by talking to and obtaining information from reporters in the field, researching the topic by scouring news and Internet sources, and then building a visual representation of the critical story elements. In the case of the mine collapse, both geographic and geologic reference material was needed. Plus, there were elements specific to the mining industry: miners’ equipment, coal-mining methods, drilling and sound-detection technology.

“Now, imagine doing all this information gathering and visual referencing, and then producing a meaningful graphic - on a tight deadline! It’s a challenge, but one that we relish,” he adds.

Josh Awtry, The Trib’s AME for Presentation, tells us he was out of town the first week of the mine disaster.

Graphics Editor Todd Adams did a superlative job in ensuring the quality was top-notch. The rest of the graphics team — Amy Lewis, Mike Miller, Steve Baker and Rhonda Maylett — all pitched in for some very informative and collaborative graphics.

Notice that very few of the graphics have one byline. The graphics team has really pulled together and played to each other’s strengths.

Two more, from late in the story cycle.
—

Remember the A-Team? At the end of every episode, the fellas would build some day-saving concoction and there’d always be these ultra-tight montage shots of them building — you could never tell what it was until the end of the scene.

Watching our team work on a graphic lately is sort of like that. You see everyone working on some weird piece, and it all pulls together into something great at the end.

Congratulations to you and your staff, Josh. Thanks for sending the graphics.

Read Coyne’s Saturday column here.

Find the Tribune’s mine collapse coverage online here.

—

As if that wasn’t enough, The Salt Lake Tribune launched a new web site this month, devoted to high school sports.

It’s the brainchild of Michael Anastasi — managing editor for sports and features at the Tribune — and web producers Manny Mellor and Antonio Ramirez.

See the site for yourself here.

Read another Connie Coyne column about the sports site here.

Read about the sports site over in SportsDesigner.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 at 5:07 am and is filed under News design, Newspapers, Visual Editors, Graphics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.