Local members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) would have likely recognised a picture of the editor of Fitzrovia News on the letters’ page of the union’s mag, which dropped through doors this week. Even if it wasn’t captioned.
The unmistakable Mike Pentelow had reached for his linotype machine to rattle off a comment to The Journalist about a lack of captions on pictures not only in that mag but in print media in general.
Pentelow went on to lament the falling standards of modern journalism which leaves readers lost and confused.
It seems that a picture is not worth a thousand words unless it is captioned properly.
“It is rare nowadays to see the contents of a picture simply described in a caption printed below it” he writes.
“Instead, a reference to it is buried in the middle of an article which has to be searched for (and sometime the subs forget to include it),” he spluttered.
“Or several pictures are scattered all over a page and there seems to be a reluctance to place individual captions under them.”
He signed off with a call to action and a “return of the simple informative caption right next to the picture it is describing”.
Bless him.