Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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Institute for Journalism Excellence
Beanie Babies and Barbie dolls at the Tribune
Compare Beanie Babies to Barbie dolls.
The idea was for a news graphic to support a story on the dangers of
investing in Beanie Babies. It sounded clear and logical, even easy.
It was none of those things.
But that’s how it floated out of the Chicago Tribune’s 11 a.m. editor
meeting and landed on my desk in news graphics. It was my second week at
the Chicago Tribune, where I was a graphics coordinator as part of my ASNE
fellowship.
Graphics journalism had fascinated me for some years, and the Tribune’s
pioneering work had led in its development. Long before USA Today, the
Tribune’s Tony Majeri, now a senior editor, had begun forging graphics
and news together, and his work was being admirably advanced by the news
graphics department and its editor, Stacy Sweat.
If I was going to learn the “how” of information graphics, the Chicago
Tribune was the place to do it, and the ASNE fellowship was giving me that
chance.
With the Beanie Babies assignment, my learning curve turned particularly
steep.
Every graphic needs four things: idea, information, design, and execution.
For the Beanie Babies graphic, the idea seemed to be there, until I examined
it closely. Then it fell apart. How can you compare Beanie Babies and Barbie
dolls — volatility of price, number produced, type of collector, or what?
And where would I get that kind of information, even if it existed? The
toys are similar in size and purpose, but as collectibles they are completely
different in how they are produced and marketed.
If there was going to be a graphic to advance this story, it would have
to be something other than a direct comparison. But what?
At the Tribune, the news graphics department has coordinators and artists.
Coordinators are reporters who conceptualize the idea, gather the information
and suggest a design. Their work is run through an editor, who then turns
it over to an artist. The coordinator and artist work side by side to execute
the graphic.
The Beanie Babies assignment led me into an afternoon of difficult,
intensive and often frustrating research. Facing a 7 p.m. deadline, I tried
to become an expert in “collectibles” and to mold what I was finding out
into some form that would add a visual dimension to our story. I searched
the Internet, looked for information in reference books, interviewed dealers
in the Chicago area, and even talked with people around the office.
Sometime that afternoon, the information I was gathering suggested an
idea. The graphic could present a variety of famous collectibles, such
as baseball cards and Cabbage Patch dolls, and give their original, peak,
and current prices. When I had finally clarified that idea to myself, I
knew what kind of information I would need for the graphic.
Sometime after 5 p.m. I began designing the graphic and writing the
copy. While I was doing that Steve Layton, an assistant graphics editor,
dug out illustrations from the fifth floor library. Within an hour, Steve
and I were huddled over his computer, fitting the pieces together and writing
and rewriting the copy. The process took us nearly an hour and brought
us right up to the business section’s deadline.
The lessons of the Beanie Baby graphic were repeated, with many variations,
during my six weeks at the Tribune. For instance:
-
An assignment for a graphic comparing the original and amended versions
of the tobacco bill in Congress — an assignment I got in my first week
at the Tribune — gave me fits when I tried to conceive of a simple way
of presenting information. (The fact that the graphic ultimately landed
on Page One brought me special satisfaction.)
-
A graphic on Medicare fraud taught me that writing three tight, efficient
sentences for a graphic can be more difficult than writing five paragraphs
for a news story.
-
When I had to produce a graphic about devices that help blind and deaf
people enjoy a big-screen theater, I gained an appreciation of the value
of an intelligent and skillful artist.
And the whole experience reminded me how much fun the challenge of daily
journalism still is.
Stovall is a journalism professor at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
