Vol. 6, No. 4, April 1995

Myopia

A composite photo illustrates that we're becoming too short-sighted

Yes, there’s no question: Everyone who has looked at the picture of Sidney Poitier and Farrah Fawcett thinks it looks "funny."

There is something about it ... finally you realize that the light falls on Poitier from one direction, while the light falls on Fawcett from the other.

The reason there’s something "funny" is that it’s a composite picture -- it was assembled in an electronic image manipulation program and distributed by the CBS television network to promote Children of the Dust, a miniseries broadcast in February.

Among the places the image was sent was TV Data Technologies, a supplier of TV listings, guides and features to more than 2700 outlets, including newspapers and print and electronic video guides provided by cable operators.

Since CBS didn't say that the picture was a composite, TV Data didn't warn its customers either.

Fortunately -- or maybe unfortunately -- one of TV Data’s customers is the News-Gazette in Champaign-Urbana, Ill. And the editor who placed that image on the front page of the TV book was our own Pete Wetmore.

Inside, Wetmore talks to editors who used the image, TV Data and various network publicists about their policies regarding composite images, and whether, since this is "entertainment promotion," the issues of composite photos should prevail in this arena as well as the "news" arena.

Certainly CBS was short-sighted in its embrace of new technologies to promote its broadcasts. Certainly TV Data should have been a better gatekeeper.

But the myopia doesn't stop there -- as Nora Paul points out inside.

Paul, the head of libraries and electronics for the Poynter Institute of St. Petersburg, Fla., spoke at the Interactive Newspapers conference, held in February in Dallas. We didn't get an opportunity to attend the meeting, but Paul sent along her speech for our perusal.

Paul has reworked that speech for inclusion here. In it, she is quite clear: Far too many editors and publishers are being short-sighted in the preparations to move to what I now call "inkless publishing" -- which covers most of the new media, including on-line, wireless, audiotext, fax-on-demand and CD-ROM. The most staggering statistic Paul cites is one that only 29 percent of surveyed newspapers have an electronic news library.

As Paul makes clear, how can you plan to recycle your information if you don't bother to keep it? Talk about missing the nose plain on the face.

But here is a case of anti-myopia: as free-lance writer (and new media maven) Teresa Martin points out in her coverage of Digital ’95 (sponsored annually by the National Press Photographers Association), the theme of the conference was electronic publishing and there were many instances of Internet and CD-ROM adventures that many news executives -- including photographers -- are taking.

Martin -- like Paul before her -- indicates, electronic publishing is nothing without a vigorous archiving program.

And yet in another instance of short-sightedness: Our man Wetmore talks to half-a-dozen news executives who have had various solutions to wearing the sobriquet "systems editor." Why do systems editors give up and how can we stop it?

Wetmore -- who himself was able to get a toe-hold back in the newsroom at the Baltimore Sun after a stint in the systems chair -- raises questions about challenge and top management support.

From Wetmore’s perspective, it appears that newspapers are ruining their best assets -- technologically savvy editors -- rather than building them a career.

You've got to keep the digital signals you're turning into ink-on-paper, because your future is in preserving those signals.

Your future is in preserving the people who understand those signals. Your future is in making certain those digital signals aren't manipulated to distort the truth.

Don't be myopic.

-- David M. Cole

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From THE COLE PAPERS, April 1995, Copyright © 1995, All Rights Reserved.