More sources should adopt your press criticism model

Sept. 24, 2011 — I think your colored annotations in “NYT: still wearing its politics on its newsroom sleeve” are awesome, and I hope you continue publishing media criticism on this model.

I believe directly highlighting text makes the criticism far more clear than the alternative: a criticism expressed in text that must be retained by the reader as a faint mental abstraction.

Much of human experience is at least vaguely synesthetic; vocal intonations and melodic contours of music can signify emotional content. We map out value judgments (safety/danger, friend/foe) into visual space; we readily understand graphics that grade things according to intensity of color.

While text communicates detail, colored visual signifiers may be best suited to communicate conceptual abstractions which organize details. And I think media criticism is largely about organizing pieces of reports into larger categories they are instances of. Without visual aid to set the context, it’s easy to get drunk on the details.

Anyway, I do hope more highlighted articles come out, and I hope your example is emulated across the internet.

— Abben Maguire, Richmond, Maine