They're not complex PowerPoint presentations, but in today's journalistic landscape, with both independent and corporate sources, online photo slideshows are all the rage. And they certainly have their advantages (see slideshow).
But they also risk encouraging reader apathy. As someone who's clicked through more than my fair share of "The Cities with the Most __" and "The __ Most Hideous Celebrity Transformations" sort of slideshows, it's obvious that websites' reliance on photo slideshows in order to have consistent new content has gone a bit overboard in the past several years. Often, the slideshows involve very little information with very few links, begging the question of whether they're effective news-communicating items at all.
Of course, some photo slideshows are incredible, and there are definitely advantages to visually connecting a photo with a chunk of information about a perhaps-difficult-to-read-through story. But sometimes, I feel like that 24/7 television news cycle that we critique all of the time - the dilemma presented when you have to fill so many hours of airtime - seeps into the Internet news. To keep readers coming back and refreshing your site, are we relying too much on the repackaging of recent news into photo slideshows to produce content every few hours?
But they also risk encouraging reader apathy. As someone who's clicked through more than my fair share of "The Cities with the Most __" and "The __ Most Hideous Celebrity Transformations" sort of slideshows, it's obvious that websites' reliance on photo slideshows in order to have consistent new content has gone a bit overboard in the past several years. Often, the slideshows involve very little information with very few links, begging the question of whether they're effective news-communicating items at all.
Of course, some photo slideshows are incredible, and there are definitely advantages to visually connecting a photo with a chunk of information about a perhaps-difficult-to-read-through story. But sometimes, I feel like that 24/7 television news cycle that we critique all of the time - the dilemma presented when you have to fill so many hours of airtime - seeps into the Internet news. To keep readers coming back and refreshing your site, are we relying too much on the repackaging of recent news into photo slideshows to produce content every few hours?
