Although he’s a key member of The San Diego Union-Tribune staff, chances are you won’t see Michael Price’s byline in the newspaper. His is a visual medium, but his presence is invisible to the public. Price is the presentation editor, and as such his duties include overseeing the newspaper’s graphics and illustrations, and, with our design editors, continually changing the newspaper’s look and feel.
As Price explains it, he leads a department that has a different way of presenting stories through visuals. “It’s a different form of storytelling, as opposed to words only.” With graphics, a journalist can tell a story in a way that could never be duplicated by words alone or by photographs alone, he explained.
Price, like dozens of others on the Union-Tribune staff assignment editors, news editors, copy editors, librarians and more works behind the scenes. Yet their everyday duties are essential in producing the Union-Tribune. From time to time, I will be writing about those who toil outside the limelight but whose roles are crucial to the newspaper.
In Price’s case, he leaves a mark on how the Union-Tribune looks and what a reader can learn from visuals.
Price said the development of graphics has given news publications a greater range of options in telling a story. “Stories that are more visual in and of themselves can be presented that way.”
One example is Petco Park. To tell the story of the baseball stadium, the newspaper turned to informational graphics to give readers a view of the park that is impossible to present in words or photographs. Techniques that are now available allow news artists, in the case of the ballpark, to cut away the sides and expose the inner levels to the reader. “A photograph couldn’t do that. A traditional story a narrative would leave it only to your imagination,” Price said.
Sometimes graphics are complements to a story. On March 31, a story in Sports took a look at steroids and other factors that may account for the huge increase in the number of home runs hit in the major leagues.
“As we showed, there are a lot of other factors that could help create that statistical anomaly,” Price said. Through illustrations and graphics, the Union-Tribune was able to explain factors such as composition of the ball and design of new stadiums that could account for the increase.
Sometimes graphics are used to illustrate and explain complex proposals, such as saving the Salton Sea. “The reader simply understands it better if you show it as well as tell it,” Price said.
Some graphics are long-range projects (the one on the Salton Sea took about a month from start to finish); others are put together on deadline for breaking news stories. Use of graphics in newspapers has exploded over the last two decades. Price, who has been with the Union-Tribune about a year and a half, created the nation’s first undergraduate major in graphic journalism at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., in 1993. While many colleges and universities have courses in graphic journalism, only a few offer undergraduate majors in it, Price said. The creation of the program at Ball State was cited by the Society for News Design in a list of the 25 most significant contributions to the field of news design during the society’s 25 years.
Telling stories with graphics has increased because of its efficiency, Price said. “You can fit more in less space. We are a visually sophisticated society, given the time we have spent with television, video games, VCRs, DVDs, computers. As our society becomes more visually sophisticated, news magazines and newspapers have reacted by pushing the envelope in telling stories visually.”
Those who work with graphics may sometimes be called news artists or graphic journalists but, as Price explained it, they are journalists first.
What’s the difference between an artist and a news artist?
While true art may or may not speak to the viewer, that is never the goal of informational graphics, Price said. “With informational graphics, everyone has to walk away with the same understanding. Look at a Van Gogh and everyone gets a different feeling. With informational graphics, everyone has to walk away with the same understanding.”
Price’s impact can be felt by those who work for him. As Chris Ross, news design editor, put it, Price is valuable at brain-storming and generating conceptual ideas. He also acts as a sounding board, which is highly valued. As presentation editor, he has an impact that can be seen in the increased emphasis on visuals in the new Tuesday Currents Health section. He also had a hand in the design of the Olympics preview sections and daily coverage. Those efforts represent a departure from the newspaper’s conventional visual style and are a sign of more to come.
