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Not all journalism is words...

Posted: 10/03/04 By: Jemima Kiss

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Leading visual journalists and infographic designers will be meeting in Spain later this month for the 12th annual Malofiej awards and infographic summit.

Malofiej, a reference to an Argentinian infographic artist, is the name given to the awards scheme run by the Spanish branch of the Society of News Design. The summit will also provide workshops and conferences from 21 to 26 March in Pamplona.

Speakers include Alberto Cairo of elmundo.es, Geoff McGhee of nytimes.com and Alejandro Tumas of clarin.com.

Infographics, or information graphics, is the term used to describe diagrams or charts that illustrate news stories.

Graphics editor Gert Nielsen will be speaking at the conference and judging the awards. For Mr Nielsen, who also runs visualjournalism.com, it is a valuable opportunity to meet colleagues.

"We're a quite small profession and it is very refreshing to get to talk with our international colleagues," said Mr Nielsen.

Although the web provides exciting options for animated graphics and multimedia tools, there are several problems for visual journalists working online.

"At some time before 2000 we expected the web to take over with animated graphics and all," he told dotJournalism.

"But when it turned out it was next to impossible to earn money on the net, the editorial interest for the flashy infographics faded quickly because they're quite expensive to produce."

Infographics are often used to illustrate complex issues, such as the recent Mars landings, but fine detail is often better presented in print than on screen.

"You can do animation and tell the story over several frames with rollovers and so on, but this is often time-consuming and if the graphic story is linear most readers don't like it. A good web-graphic concept hasn't really surfaced yet."

Mr Nielsen established visualjournalism.com to encourage debate among the international community of visual journalists. Visitors can post examples of infographics to the site and add comments and ratings.

Mr Nielsen recently posted an extensive article analysing infographic coverage of the capture of Saddam Hussein.

The next article will be by creative director of Spanish newspaper La Voz de Galicia, detailing his work on a Saddam graphic produced for its Sunday edition.

See also:
http://www.snd-e.org/sndenglish/index_e.html
http://www.visualjournalism.com
http://www.snd.org
http://www.snd-e.org
dotJournalism awards diary:
http://www.journalism.co.uk/awards.shtml
dotJournalism events diary:
http://www.journalism.co.uk/events.shtml

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