Every Picture (of the Financial Crisis) Tells a Story, Don't It?

By: Ray Pellecchia

File Under: NYSE

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If you love newspapers and markets (as does your humble blogger), and in particular love newspaper photos of markets, you'll enjoy Picturing the Crisis: A look at photographic coverage in the financial press (CJR.org), in which the Columbia Journalism Review assesses who has had the best photos of the financial crisis: the Financial Times, New York Times or Wall Street Journal?

I'll stay out of that horse race, because although I'm a PR guy I'm not quite that stupid.

But of course many of the photos are from the NYSE Trading Floor, and my colleagues and I have worked with many of the photographers who have worked the story, so I do immodestly feel qualified to comment on a couple of aspects of the story.

Excerpt:

Moving along, we’d like to register a complaint about what has become a key element of the iconography of the credit crisis: traders with their heads in their hands, or in other poses of distress. Such photos are always a staple of down markets, and this one is no exception. Most of them are forgettable, and we wish editors would think twice before putting them on the front page.

My take is that the head-in-hands photos are only a small subset of what the photographers are actually shooting. If you look at the online news sites and photo aggregation sites, you'll see many more photos, and much more variety.

Then why do the cliched photos continue to be chosen for newspaper front pages?

Maybe it's that the editors are looking for a photo that will give the reader a shorthand way to know what's happening. The reader sees a chart pointing down, a photo of a trader with head in hands, and the reader immediately knows what kind of a day it was in the market. I hope editors will also remember that fans of newspapers and markets look to papers for compelling, different photos to go along with in-depth, insightful articles. Give us something that grabs us and draws us in.

One other comment: this article and others raise the fact that certain NYSE traders tend to be photographed again and again. I've seen one blog even question whether a trader was seeking the spotlight. The fact is that most of those who get photographed time and again happen to have their trading desks or booths directly next to the gallery from which photographers often shoot. That's not the fault of the traders or the photographers, and to mix things up we've been giving more photographers greater access to the entire floor.

Of course, the business-cliche watch is not exclusive to images; in Cliche Watch (Business Edition), New York Times deputy news editor Philip B. Corbett flags some too-oft-written words about finance, including investors doubling down; firms on the hook; and the United States being divided into just two streets: Wall and Main.