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Charles Apple: The Visual Side of Journalism

 

‘Web design’ archive

Number of comments in parentheses

June 13: Coverage of giant wildfires by the Colorado Springs Gazette

2012: Wildfires ravage the state of Colorado. The Fort Collins Coloradoan paper covers the disaster with a string of outstanding front pages.       2013: Wildfires ravage the state of Colorado. But now it’s the Gazette of Colorado Springs that’s tasked with telling the story of what’s happening just outside of the city. Wednesday’s front page featured a wonderful [...]

June 10: Because pictures don’t lie (1)

We know it’s true: The president really is checking your email. That’s a quick sample from the latest viral sensation on Tumblr, called — What else? — Obama is Checking Your Email.

June 6: Matt Mansfield named executive editor for digital at National Geographic

National Geographic announced Wednesday that longtime visual journalism editor and leader Matt Mansfield has been hired as executive editor for digital. Here’s the paragraph about him from the press release: Matt Mansfield comes from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where he was director and bureau chief for the school’s reporting program in Washington, D.C., as well as an associate [...]

June 5: Tampa Bay Times’ Jen Hiatt leaving newspapers

Jen Hiatt — for the past seven years, a designer for the Tampa Bay Times — announced last night via Facebook: After nearly seven years in Tampa Bay, Jake Stewart and I are headed to Orlando! Jake will be teaching at [the University of Central Florida] and I will be joining the Communications and Neighborhood Relations team at City Hall. [...]

May 23: Army vet story is ‘the most important story I’ve ever worked on’ (1)

That’s how Chris Hickerson, a web editor and designer for the Colorado Springs Gazette, describes a three-part project his paper ran this week. Chris writes: Since I was hired in January I’ve been working with our terrifically talented investigative reporter, Dave Philipps, and our incredibly talented photo intern (who we just hired full time, thank God, since the he is [...]

May 16: You gotta wonder, sometimes, about Google ads

At one point Wednesday, I clicked on a link to a story at the Chicago Tribune about the unfolding IRS scandal. What I found fascinating were the ads the Tribune added to my news. First is that Amazon ad across the top. I had been searching for “Harry Truman” earlier in the day. Google knows that and stripped an ad [...]

May 13: A fun illustrated biography of a faux-news-media ‘rock star’

Did you know that today is Stephen Colbert‘s 49th birthday? Actually, I did. But only because I sprinkle in a few celebrity and media birthdays into my blog posts and twitter feeds. Alex Smith at Can’t Miss TV has gone a step further, however, building one of those tall internet-type “infographics” that gives us a brief but entertaining illustrated biography [...]

May 6: A really cool interactive look at baseball salaries by the LA Times

Illustrator and cartoonist Greg Kelly tips us off about this really cool interactive graphic posted recently by the Los Angeles Times. This presentation breaks down the salary teams pay at each position and presents it in bubble chart format. Or, rather, half-bubble chart format. Because the really cool thing is the ability to dial up any two teams you want [...]

April 19: A wild, wild night in Boston

In a city that’s had its share of hell this week, last night was, yes, a night from hell. By now, you’re probably aware of what happened. The FBI released surveillance photos of two “suspects” of the Boston Marathon bombing on Monday. The pictures were beamed around the world on TV and the internet and ended up on page one [...]

April 11: A fun fast-motion video look at a cartoon illustration in progress

My pal Robert Zavala — an editor and illustrator for the Victoria (Texas) Advocate — won a statewide award this week. But it wasn’t for his illustration work. It was for a fun illustration of his illustration work. Via a video. I’ll let him tell the story. Robert writes: I just won the Texas APME award for best video under [...]

March 27: Colorado State student paper celebrates a local tradition of craft beer

Greg Mees, editor-in-chief of the Rocky Mountain Collegian at Colorado State University, writes to tell us of a giant cross-platform project his team launched this week. The topic is one very dear to me: Beer. Greg must have known it’d get my attention. He writes: This is a seven-month project that we launched yesterday following a pilot fresh-hop brew for [...]

March 27: Great data. Great interactive design. Lousy storytelling. (4)

My pal Chris Soprych — of the GateHouse news design hub in Rockford, Ill. — points out this interactive map from the Huffington Post showing gun fatalities throughout the U.S. since the Sandy Hook incident back in December. The presentation begins zoomed in on Newtown, Connecticut. The “camera” slowly pulls back and pans left to include the entire nation. Meanwhile, [...]

March 22: Just when you think you’ve seen it all regarding brackets… (1)

Just when you think you’ve seen every possible way to fill out a college bracket, along comes the New Yorker with a brand-new approach. It’s all about the amount of money spent on men’s basketball, says the New Yorker. So why not fill out a bracket in which the winning team in each game might be the school that spends [...]

March 20: Five more fun March Madness pages for you

Monday, we looked at a handful of great March Madness front pages and special sections. Today, we have a second batch for you. Click any of these for a much larger look… — NEW YORK TIMES New York, N.Y. Circulation: 1,586,757 Wayne Kamadoi tells us: Sam Manchester working on these bubbles until the final buzzer before deadline. By now, you [...]

March 16: Fort Worth Star-Telegram artist Steve Wilson becomes a food blogger (1)

My old pal Steve Wilson — senior artist at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram — has also been blogging lately for his newspaper. About cooking. He tells us his Weekend Chef blog… …is just something that I came up with that I was doing in my spare time the past year and a half that has taken on a life of [...]

March 16: Outlet lays off much of its staff… and then runs year-old press release as news.

A Connecticut-based “hyperlocal” news site called the Daily Voice of Fairfield published a story Friday about work on a new commuter rail line. One little problem: The information was more than a year old. Somehow, a year-old press release was plugged in as a brand-new item. Joshua O’Connell — a longtime newspaper copy editor and designer and a senior digital interface [...]

Feb. 20: How the K.C. Star covered last night’s huge gas explosion

A huge explosion ripped Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza last night, destroying a restaurant and injuring 16 people. At last report, one person is still missing. Here’s how the Star responded this morning. Click for a much larger view. Front-page designer Charles Gooch tells us: The main photo was a great shot by Tammy Ljungblad. The decision to put it [...]

Feb. 19: Virginian-Pilot seeks online producer, ‘heavy on the design skills’

My old colleague Mark Edelen — director of online production for the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va. — is looking to make a key hire for his team. He tells us: We’re looking for an online producer, heavy on design skills, to join our team. This will be the replacement for David Putney, who went to Boston. Here’s the want ad, [...]

Feb. 12: What lousy timing for such an obtrusive ad (4)

The folks at the Los Angeles Times had huge news to report this afternoon: Christopher Dorner — that cop-killing, ex-cop fugitive who’s been on the loose for the better part of a week, now, is smack in the middle of a shootout with police in Big Bear, Calif. (In fact, the standoff is still in progress as I write this [...]

Feb. 8: Tiny paper gets huge results with… what? A complex multimedia map? No way! (1)

Tiny newspapers can’t do multimedia and they can’t do video. Right? Wrong. Make sure you watch that full-frame, so you can see all the data points on the map. Reporting and narrating a multimedia video — featuring Google Earth Pro — is the editor of the Fort Collins Coloradoan himself, Josh Awtry. Josh writes today via Facebook: Yes, this is [...]

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