Not Every Article Needs a Picture (theoutline.com)

An anonymous reader shares an article: Pictures and text often pair nicely together. You have an article about a thing, and the picture illustrates that thing, which in many cases helps you understand the thing better. But on the web, this logic no longer holds, because at some point it was decided that all texts demand a picture. It may be of a tangentially related celeb. It may be a stock photo of a person making a face. It may be a Sony logo, which is just the word SONY. I have been thinking about this for a long time and I think it is stupid. I understand that images -- clicks is industry gospel, but it seems like many publishers have forgotten their sense of pride. If a picture is worth a thousand words, it's hard for me to imagine there'll be much value in the text of an article illustrated by a generic stock image. As with so many problems, social media seems to deserve much of the blame for this. Until the mid-to-late '00s, a publication's homepage played a dominant role in driving people to individual articles. Homepages mostly mimicked the front pages of newspapers, where major stories -- things that warranted investment in original art -- had images. Other stories just got a headline. Over time, the endless space of the internet lowered the standard for which articles needed art, but still, not everything got an image. [...] Even the unflinching belief that people won't read articles if there aren't pictures doesn't hold up to logic. Sure, interesting pictures can attract readers, but most of these images are not interesting. And even if it were slightly better for business, is that really a compromise worth making?

Comments

Not every article need scrolling effects either.

[SuperKendall]

If "an image for every article" is the current fashion, I worry that could quickly morph to "images and scrolling effects for every article" You already see a ton of that across articles today.

I find it really distracting, and has the effect often I think of creating a distraction if the scrolling is at all choppy (which it almost always is).

The fundamental problem is there are so many places that want content now that the little content there is is being stretched super thin, with layers of articles referencing a single original piece of work. I'm not quite sure how to solve that but I think eventually we'll see new approaches that are not quite so insane.

Pictures are also about layout

[EdZep]

I'll agree that stock photos are lame. BUT, photos are not just about communicating information; photos are also layout elements that break up the huge mass of text, and make an article more readable, or, less intimidating to read. So, I can live with the lame stock photos, as better than nothing.

Re: Pictures are also about layout

[real gumby]

Iâ(TM)m the opposite: Iâ(TM)d much rather just have a big block text so I can read it and enjoy it rather than have to move my eye all over the place to get around these pointless pictures that get in the way.

But I know not everybody is like that. I wish âoereader modeâ really was about reading and would strip all images out

Modern web design is fucked up in a thousand ways.

[sootman]

Remember when information density was a thing? On my glorious 30", 1600px-high display at work, this page takes THREE screenfuls. https://about.mattermost.com/

Select all, copy, paste, word count: 298 words.

As for file size, the page itself -- no includes -- is 650k. When I save as an archive with scripts and images, it's 4.5 MB.

FOR ONE FUCKING PAGE. With 298 words. Unreal.

And this page, from Apple: https://www.apple.com/iphone/c... -- long rant at http://pixelcity.com/index.php...

TL;DR: 1,049 vertical pixels are used for SIX lines of text.