CTV News Montreal has flashy new titles super-imposed at the bottom of news reports. In addition to the standard text-over-blue-bar, there’s now clip art or stock photos that are relevant to the story. A map of Iraq for a story about the war. The logo of the city for a municipal affairs story. Flames for a story about a fire.
What gets me is that there are people paid to do this. People spend time during their day finding stock photos and photoshopping them into graphics. People who could otherwise be performing acts of real journalism.
Sadly, it appears CTV is more interested in flashy gimmicks like uninformative graphics and pointless live standups to introduce pre-packaged news reports than it is in hiring more journalists to tell us what’s happening in our city.
Don’t imagine for a moment that people with journalistic training or ambitions are doing the graphics. People study extensively at CEGEP and even university level (possibly also at those trade colleges that advertise so much in the metro) to learn how to do them. It’s a different trade.
Perhaps I should rephrase. It’s not the people who should be reassigned, it’s the money used to pay them. Media outlets are firing journalists and hiring graphic designers.
There’s a place for graphic artists to present information in a way to make it easier to consume. But this is just pointless gimmickry for its own sake.