NYT beats FT and WSJ in photographing the financial crisis

Elinore Longobardi of the Columbia Journalism Review has an excellent analysis of the photography being used to illustrate the current financial turmoil, and says that the New York Times has done the best job.

Longobardi writes, “The Times has long had a strong tradition of photojournalism, and an estimable staff of in-house photographers. That experience and investment has served it well in recent weeks as business news has regularly hit the front page, and thus required front-page-caliber photography to go along with it.

“At a time when newspapers across the country are struggling to maintain readership — and when their competition is not just other newspapers but other, more graphic media — they need to catch readers’ eyes. In fact, photography’s appeal to the eye may be one way to make business news more inviting to those who have not been regular readers.

“Furthermore, given that space is at a premium, it makes no sense to view photos, even for not-always-image-amenable business stories, as filler. Like the text that accompanies it, if a photo doesn’t give important information, we don’t need to see it.

“Now, we admit that financial photography can be a bit of a challenge. (How many photos of frazzled stock traders do we need?) But a look at recent Times coverage shows that the bar is not impossibly high.”

Read more here.