Charles Apple

Thursday, the popular magazine/blog Mental Floss trashed a really interesting graphic from The San Francisco Chronicle. Namely, this one by staffer Todd Trumbull, showing from where along the Golden Gate Bridge suicide jumpers have done their thing:

Todd’s a fabulous artist. I worked with him briefly at the Chicago Tribune. Naturally, you’ll want a larger view of his chart. So click on this thumbnail:

Mental flossist Ransom Riggs writes:

From the San Francisco Chronicle, this is probably the most bizarre and depressing infographic we’ve seen. It just doesn’t jibe with the happy-go-lucky nature of most infographics…

Jason Eiseman of the Jason the Content Librarian blog seems to feel the same way I do about that little rant: That perhaps Ransom’s ship isn’t fully rigged or something.

Jason writes:

…the second link goes to what I think is a brilliant graphic from the San Francisco Chronicle. It is a map of the Golden Gate Bridge, listing every light pole, and documenting the number of suicides at every location on the bridge. It conveys so much information at just a quick glance.

The map, colors, and orientation of the graphic instantly tell you something about the pattern of jumpers on the bridge. What I noticed first was how many jumpers leapt from the East side of the bridge, rather than the West. Reading some of the text informs you that there is a bicycle lane on the West side and a pedestrian walkway on the East side.

The graphic contains so much information, displayed so simply that I think Tufte himself would proud.

The author of the Mental Floss’ blog post doesn’t like it because the subject is too morbid, and calls it “bizarre and depressing”. It’s certainly sad, but at the same time it says so much more about the phenomenon of suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge than any article or news item I have ever read.

I agree with Jason. It’s a terrific graphic. Wonderfully interesting information presented in a clear and compelling way. What more could we ask for?

Who the hell said that infographics have to be “happy-go-lucky”? When the news is “happy-go-lucky,” we can do that. But when the news is about suicide or a plane crash or about some clown bursting into a classroom or a mall with a gun and a death wish — no, neither your stories nor your visuals are going to yuk it up much.

What did Riggs expect? Replace the black squares with icons of lemmings?

The dig came as part of a post entitled “Six Less-Than-Helpful Infographics.” In addition to the San Francisco suicide piece, Riggs cites:

1) A horrifying piece that uses cute icons to denote the plagues of Passover:

2) Another horrifying diagram that shows how to conduct a strip search:

3) A gag infographic from The Onion that makes fun of infographics:

4) A Snapshot graphic from USA Today that… well, probably isn’t one of their more informative Snapshots:

And 5) An alleged second USA Today Snapshot graphic that, from the look of the typography — Futura Black? — isn’t really a USA Today piece at all.

So Rigg’s “Six Less-Than-Helpful Infographics” include one truly nice piece, one example of mistaken identity and one gag piece. Only half of his examples are legitimate examples.

Lucky for us that Riggs hasn’t discovered the work of The Moral Volcano. He’d have a field day with that:

I’ve admired Mental Floss for its wit and its smart humor. Perhaps I’ve been too easy on them. Or perhaps Riggs should stick to his screenplays. Or his picket line.

Meanwhile — in a related vein — New Media guru Steve Outing posted about the outrage he felt when he saw this pie chart in the Brodeur Journalists Survey:

Outing writes:

One in four journalist blogs. One in five has a page on a social network. Good grief, Charlie Brown!

The audience is marching online, in many cases switching allegiances to online and digital, or at least adding significant digital consumption to their media diets at the expense of traditional formats, and most journalists don’t move with them. News professionals can’t understand the transformation in media consumption if they don’t live it themselves. I think every journalist should blog, maintain pages on social networking sites, use new media-related websites (Twitter, Digg, et al), etc…

It’s 2008, folks. My young daughters, apparently, are more attuned to the media reality than three-quarters of journalists. Do you expect to be relevant to them when they become adults if you don’t live in their world?

When I see stuff like this, I sometimes wonder if there’s hope for the news industry.

Outing, of course, is absolutely correct. The fact that you’re reading our modest little blog is a great thing. But I hope you’re using Facebook or LinkedIn or some of the other interesting tools available to you.

Outing can’t resist adding, however:

Oh, and while my inner critic is letting loose, I’ll point out to Brodeur that the chart is confusing; a pie chart is not the correct graphic device to present the information above. (What can I say… I once was a newspaper graphics editor.) Pie charts can’t be used when multiple answers are possible, such as with the question above.

Ha! Way to go, Steve!

Sorry, Brodeur Group. That chart was truly “Less than helpful.”

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 9:41 am and is filed under Amusing stuff, Graphics, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.