Charles Apple

Among the usual noise about who’s having a cup of coffee with whom and the latest cool YouTube videos, the Thursday afternoon bulletin jolts users of Twitter like — well, like a jet falling out of the sky:

There’s a plane in the Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy.

Those 17 words are accompanied by a link to a photo the tweeter shot with his iPhone:

Photo by Janis Krums.
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News of the photo spreads instantly. By dinnertime, 40,000 people have viewed the picture and countless others have tried to take a peek, crashing the TwitPic site as surely as Flight 1549 itself crashed into the frigid Hudson.

And — boom! — just like that, Janis Krums of Sarasota, Fla., becomes a photojournalist and internet sensation.

Janis Krums. Photo by the BBC.
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Other photos have surfaced online as well. This one, for example, apparently showing the Airbus A320 splashing down the Hudson:

And this one, apparently taken immediately after the jet drifted to a halt:

Photo by Greg Lam Pak Ng
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But Janis’ photo is so clear — even at only 600 x 800 pixels; standard for any iPhone photo — the angle is so terrific, the immediate aftermath of the crash into New York’s Hudson River is so apparent that one wonders why any paper would use any other photo.

The Associated Press must have thought so, too. It bought the photo from Janis and moved it on the wire Thursday. The picture appeared on the front of Janis’ hometown Sarasota Herald Tribune today, as well as at least 21 others — including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Orlando Sentinel, the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, the Kansas City Star, the San Diego Union Tribune, the San Franscisco Chronicle and the Charlotte Observer.

Janis appeared on MSNBC Thursday night and on Good Morning America today. He’s on 20/20, even as we finish writing this piece. The BBC reports that one of Janis’ New Years’ resolutions was to have more than 1,000 followers to his Twitter feed. The Beeb’s David Sollito muses:

I think he can cross that one off.

Janis continues to tweet his pals:

The last few hours have been intense. Thanks for all the support.

A few examples of how Janis’ work was played today…

The plane’s destination, when it took off from LaGuardia, was Charlotte. Therefore, it seems fitting that the Observer gave Janis’ picture bigger A1 play than any other paper, using the large amount of dead space below the plane itself to overlay a magazine-like headine:

It wasn’t that long ago when we would never have dreamt of running type across a breaking news “documentary” photograph. Now, this looks natural and normal. And damn good. Anyone disagree?

The Sun-Times used it in a similar way…

…As did the Merc. Bonus points for putting it above the nameplate:

Many, many papers went with the “Miracle on the Hudson” quote hed…

The L.A. Times had the benefit of a very clever — yet, not too light — headline:

And although it had to compete with a colorful Jesus refer, a huge home price story and an ugly-ass photo, San Antonio made fine use of Janis’ photo and a wire map:

While we’re on the subject, let’s look at what the coverage looked like today in some of the nearby dailies…

Two tabs were so similar this morning to the point of being eerie. Never have Newsday and the Daily News looked quite as redundant:

Both went with wrap-around covers; both went with small, secondary mugs of the pilot; both used thin, black strokes in order to separate their white headlines from the light blue water in the photo. Between the two, we prefer the Daily News — mostly because of the tighter crop, the cleaner typography and the poor crop on the pilot’s mug by Newsday.

Another tab — AM New York — went with a tighter lede photo that reduced the scope of the near-disaster. You’d think only six passengers were aboard.

The headline is too tight between the tail of the plane and the right side of the page. The designer would have been better off knocking the size of the hed down ten points or so.

In addition, there’s a bad juxtaposition between the tail of the plane and the Statue of Liberty in the paper’s nameplate.

We like Metro New York a little more — but only just a little. We feel for the passengers in frigid, ankle- and thigh-deep water, but we’re seeing too many boats and not enough plane here.

Note that all four tabs, so far, also use the pilot’s mug on the front.

The Middletown, N.Y., Herald-Record used a very, very similar photo with very, very similar results. You might not even see the plane if you didn’t know it was there:

Many papers used this head-on shot of victims pertched in life rafts attached to the front hatches of the plane and standing on the wings. The secondary shot of a very chilly man being cared for my EMS techs provides a nice contrast:

We applaud the Newark Star-Ledger for using a photo we didn’t see anywhere else — but, like AM New York, we see too few victims here:

There were 155 people on that plane! This photo just wasn’t a good choice.

The Journal News of Westchester County used the shot with a single ferry — presumably the one in which Janis Krums was riding — plus a wonderful secondary shot of a relieved victim:

The Times chose that same Reuters photo:

Much better, we think, is this display of an AP photo atop today’s Wall Street Journal:

Did you ever think you’d live long enough to see the Wall Street Journal kick the New York Times‘ ass in photo editing and design — even if just for one day? On the other hand, did you think you’d live long enough to see a color photo stripped across all six columns of the top of the WSJ?

Find Janis Krums’ blog here and his Twitter feed here. Read about his photo in Photo District News, CNet, the New York Daily News, the Detroit Free Press, and the L.A. Times, or watch a video of him by the BBC.

See the New York Times‘ take on it all here. The best story about the crash in general we’ve seen all day, in fact, is this stirring NYT piece. Find a giant gallery of post-crash photos here.

Perhaps this whole phenomenon can be put in perspective by a comment posted by a reader of the Sarasota Herald Tribune’s brief piece about Janis’ photo.

“BHE Productions” writes:

Many years ago my grandfather came through Ellis Island with just his big bulky old black-and-white camera and the materials he used to hand-tint his photos. It was that important to him to bring these things with him to America. And today we have  — in sharp detail and brilliant color — this astounding picture of the same area, a photo taken with a cell phone!

I can just picture the old Dutchman grinning and shaking his head in amazement as he looks down on this scene!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 16th, 2009 at 9:48 pm and is filed under Innovative ideas, News design, Photojournalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.