Illustrated Journalism: From Woodcuts to JPEGs

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Christian P. Saenz

Dr. Eleanor Wachs

EN 151: Writing Studio Section 03

17 October 2014

Illustrated Journalism: From Woodcuts to JPEGs

A picture is worth a thousand words. This is especially

true when that picture is designed specifically to be

published along with a thousand words. Images and news have

long been tied together, as images can communicate

succinctly what words cannot. Before the development in the

1880s of efficient ways to reproduce photographs in

magazines and newspapers, publishers used illustrations to

depict and comment on events of the day for readers (Graphic

Journalism and Illustration, Library of Congress). “Even

after the photomechanical halftone process made it possible

to reproduce photographs in books, magazines, and

newspapers, publishers continued to use the work of artists

to illustrate feature material, if not the news itself.”

(Graphic Journalism and Illustration, Library of Congress).

Illustrations that accompanied news articles not only made

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reading easier, but made the news accessible to people who

could not read at all.

Prolific illustrators like Charles Dana Gibson, Charles

Currier, Rose O’Neill, Bruce Bairnsfather, and Al Hirschfeld

brought news publications such as LIFE, The New York Sun, The

Illustrated London News, and The New York Times into the cultural

spotlight. For some publications, like The Illustrated London

News, illustrations were the cornerstone of their financial

success. Herbert Ingram started The Illustrated London News on

the belief that papers with illustrations sold more copies

than those with none. The London Illustrated News was an

immediate success and the first edition sold 26,000 copies.

Within a few months it was selling over 65,000 copies a

week. “In the 20th century the London Illustrated News

employed Britain's top artists including Frank Reynolds,

Henry M. Brock, Fortunino Matania, H. M. Bateman and Lewis

Baumer.“(Spartacus-educational.com)

Illustrated

journalism was

also beneficial

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to the illustrators’ careers, as the wide coverage of the

aforementioned newspapers gave the artists enough reach to

influence entire generations of illustrators. Charles Dana

Gibson’s depictions of women influenced his generation’s

vision of the ideal woman, dubbed the “Gibson Girl” (Graphic

Journalism and Illustration, Library of Congress). Rose

O’Neill’s access to a large audience through LIFE and Ladies'

Home Journal helped her reach national fame through her

introduction of “The Kewpies,” cherubic characters that

became a lucrative merchandising craze (Graphic Journalism

and Illustration, Library of Congress).

The invention and technological advancement of

photography did not entirely kill news illustration, instead

relegating it to the world of satirical cartoons and high-

end news magazines like The New Yorker and National Geographic,

where illustration is used for emotional impact and

entertainment rather than convenience. Newspapers also use

illustrators when publishing articles about concepts that

can’t be photographed, or retrospective articles that recap

world events.

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Illustrators are also useful to record events where

cameras cannot go or where photographs are not permitted. An

example in Heller & Chwast’s Illustration: A Visual History

is Felix Tropolski, a Polish-born illustrator who, in the

1930’s, started pictorially chronicling the world at war. He

later covered the first meeting of the United Nations, and

the Nuremberg War Crime Trials. (Heller)

At a Q&A in Ringling College of Art & Design, Victo

Ngai, a prolific illustrator, told an anecdote about how she

gets some of her news illustration jobs: at the Washington

Post, an editor (unnamed) needed an image for an article

about Baby Boomers influencing technology, and asked the

photo editor for a picture of Baby Boomers using technology.

The photo editor told him he could give him plenty of

photographs, but none of them would be particularly

interesting, and that he should hire an illustrator (Ngai).

Often, an editor’s first instinct is to get a picture,

rather than an illustration.

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The rise of

web journalism,

however, has

given

journalistic

illustration a new lease on life. Gawker Media, Wired,

Matter, and Symbolia lead the front lines of this movement

toward illustrated digital journalism, with artists such as

Sam Spratt, Wendy McNaughton, Mike McQuade, Angie Wang,

Simon Prades, and Joyce Rice. Gawker Media, for instance,

employs illustrators Sam Spratt and Wendy McNaughton to

illustrate news that is too current for useful photographs

to be available, and when information is easier shown than

told (Spielberg). Wired uses the infographics of Mike

McQuade to make facts and statistics easier to understand in

a fun way. Angie Wang and Simon Prades frequently

collaborate with Matter to give its stories more impact.

Joyce Rice is Symbolia’s main illustrator, turning news

stories into digital comics that connect with the reader.

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The web is a medium that privileges text over all else,

where stories can lose their identity in the chain of re-

posts, re-skinning, and simple copy-pasting that often

occurs in online journalism. Custom illustrations make a

website’s articles stand out, as images stay in our memory

longer than dry text (Metiri Group). A cheap and easy way to

add visuals to articles is the use of stock images, which

are photographs and illustrations created by artists for

generic subjects, that are then aggregated on stock image

websites like Shutterstock or Getty. Most online journalism

uses stock images to add visuals to their stories, but it’s

been found that readers will simply ignore stock images

(Nielsen, nngroup.com) due to their one-size-fits-all

generic creation.

“Photos are powerful when you show something that

happened, like a war, or a protest. Illustration shows more

value, it comments on what happened,” said Victo Ngai at the

Q&A, emphasizing that photography and illustration are used

differently in journalism (Ngai). An illustration can do

something a photograph could never do, bridging the gap

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between the writer’s ideas and the reader’s mind.

“Photography is essentially always the same medium, but

[illustrators] are always coming up with new ways to say

something,” said Rebecca Mock, at the same Q&A (Ngai).

Sources:

Heller, Steven; Chwast, Seymour. Illustration: A Visual

History. Abrams, 2008. Print. 17 October 2014.

Graphic Journalism and Illustration. The Library of Congress. Web.

18 Sep 2014.

Spielberg, Greg T. Gizmodo taps illustrators to give stories more punch,

pop, pow! The President and Fellows of Harvard College,

NiemanLab, 14 Jan 2011. Web. 18 Sep 2014.

Simkin, John. Illustrated London News. Spartacus Educational

Publishers Ltd., Spartacus-educational, September 1997.

Web. 10 October 2014.

Gibson, Charles Dana. Studies in Expression: When Women Are Jurors.

Life, 1902? Web. 17 October 21, 2014.

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Metiri Group. Multimodal Learning Through Media: What the Research

Says. Cisco Systems, Inc, Cisco. 2008. Web. 10 October

2014.

Ngai, Victo; Mock, Rebecca. “Q&A with Victo Ngai and Rebecca

Mock.” Ringling College of Art & Design, Academic

Center Auditorium, Sarasota FL. 9 October 2014.

Question and Answer Session.

Spratt, Sam. Lady Gaga Polaroid Glasses Portrait, Gizmodo, Gawker

Media, 2011. Web. 17 October 21, 2014.