CNN.com’s Atrocious Use of Photography

I just read a article in Wired about the time when the mp3 first started appearing. The general consensus was the file format was fatally flawed because the fidelity of the sound was nothing compared to that of the CD (and neither compares to vinyl). It will never catch on because “Shit Mattered” i.e people wouldn’t sacrifice the sound quality for a the smaller file. What happened was quite the opposite, just look at the millions of songs in our iTunes library. In this case there is a trade off , loose quality for ease of transfer, storage and portability and I agree shit does matter, but to most people, not that much. Keep feeding people a steady diet of fast food, high fructose corn syrup, bad imagery, and entertainment served up as news, and in the end, hope they keep coming back to the site.

This is where the big publishers should be thinking hard and long about the way they work. With cellphones and consumer cameras being able to deliver images and video in “good enough” web quality, the only thing that’s going to keep the big guys from being out done by the smaller publications would be the quality of their presentation. Why else is Wired magazine where they are as an online content provider, because their stuff looks so damn good.