Charles Apple

Yep, it’s hard to slip one past those sharp folks at the American Journalism Review. They’re all over the latest industry trends.

Poynter’s Romenesko poynted this morning to a story in the August/September issue of AJR, newly posted at AJR’s web site. It’s about “charticles.” The story acknowledges they’ve been around for a while but breathlessly talks through ASFs as if they was the latest rage.

At least the reporter — Dane Stickney of the Omaha World Herald — talked to all the right people: Josh Crutchmer of his own paper, Josh Awtry of the Salt Lake Tribune, longtime design and leadership guru Monica Moses.

The story begins positively enough, with this italicized intro;

Bite-sized combinations of words, images and graphics called charticles are in vogue at a number of American newspapers. And they are not necessarily the enemy of compelling narrative.

And the opening grafs discuss Josh’s reputation, the piece says, as a “story killer”:

A few months ago, a story-hugging editor cornered Awtry, accusing him of trying to turn the whole newspaper into one giant graphic.

“I’m not out to destroy narrative,” Awtry replied. “Just bad narrative.”

But the reporter’s true feelings on the topic come through loud and clear in the shirtail at the bottom:

Dane Stickney is a features writer at the Omaha World-Herald, where he writes 40-inch narratives about aged calligraphers and four-inch charticles on “American Idol” contestants.

Oh, for Chrissakes.

Find the AJR piece here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 11:01 am and is filed under Amusing stuff, Industry woes, News design, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.