Analyzing BBC News: Using Photos to tell the Story

Photos are an important part of any story. They allow the viewer an inside, first-hand look at any situation in any place, far or near, providing them not only with a better understanding of the story, but also a better understanding of the world.

BBC News approaches the use of photos in a few different ways. While they do embed photos directly into each article, they also have a separate page titled "In Pictures" entirely dedicated to photo content. I clicked on the page expecting to find different photo slideshows for each story, but instead I found that they break this category down into two parts: "Day in Pictures" and "Week in Pictures." These are exactly what they seem -- they take that day's (or week's) best photos from around the world and embed them into one continuous list with a short caption to describe the image.

While I think that this is an interesting and efficient way for viewers or readers to get a "quick snapshot" of today's news in pictures, it falls short because of its lack of connectivity. Despite a one-line caption, a single photo alone does not always provide all of the information readers want to know about the situation displayed. More importantly, if the path to that extra information is not clearly marked (most likely via quick-links), readers will not stay around. Instead, they will most likely turn to Google with a few keywords, hoping to get to the story as quickly as possible. Online readers are not patient people, and the majority of them will not spend time digging around your site for the story. The Google search could lead them to another news network, meaning you just lost a valuable reader (and probably many more) because of an easily-fixable short-coming. BBC could improve by simply linking the photo or caption back to longer articles, providing readers with an easy opportunity to learn more about the story behind the photo if they please.

Of course, this won't always be the case. This photo of a hippo at a Berlin zoo is probably not worth an entire article of information. But readers probably won't be looking for it in this case. However, certain news demand more attention. This photo of Ukrainian protesters in Kiev represents an ongoing crisis in the region, and readers will probably be looking for an update. The key here is to think about and know your readers and the content -- Will readers want more information regarding the situation in this photo? Do I have more information? If both answers are yes, there is no reason to leave out a quick-link.