{"id":62849,"date":"2012-03-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rockcontent.com\/blog\/the-importance-of-being-earnest-in-editing-visuals\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T16:35:42","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T19:35:42","slug":"the-importance-of-being-earnest-in-editing-visuals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pingback.com\/en\/resources\/the-importance-of-being-earnest-in-editing-visuals\/","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Being Earnest in Editing Visuals"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the olden days \u2013 30 years ago \u2013 when many U.S. newspapers were beginning to use more graphics as storytelling devices, some newsroom staffers often considered those visuals to be illustrative rather than informative. Art, some news folks thought, didn’t have to be edited or proofread. After all, art wasn’t real journalism or real content. Art was just art. “Read news art the same way you read a news story,” I pleaded to copy editors and reporters in a handout I distributed in newsrooms and at workshops. “Don\u2019t think of a graphic as an illustration that need not be proofread.” The world of visual information has gotten technically and aesthetically more sophisticated in the last three decades, and the process of editing informational graphics has improved. The evidence is on news pages \u2013 print and digital \u2013 everywhere. Just take a look at the visuals that are shared on Visual.ly<\/a>. But everybody (including this writer) needs a copy editor. Visual journalist Charles Apple makes this point occasionally in the reports on his blog, The Visual Side of Journalism<\/a>. Two cases: 1. Ideas on ideology<\/strong> <\/p>\n

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