There is a story online today about the “Lesotho Promise“, the biggest diamond to be found in 13 years, which was sold on Monday for about $12 million. Many of the articles are illustrated with photos of the mega-diamond and if you check Yahoo News, you find at least 11 photos that the editors could choose from. The interesting thing is that you can get a feel of whether the papers chose the “best” photo or not, since users have voted for their favourite pics. The 11 photos got this many votes so far:
Pic 1: 1587 votes
Pic 2: 69 votes
Pic 3: 116 votes
Pic 4: 105 votes
Pic 5: 88 votes
Pic 6: 67 votes
Pic 7: 130 votes
Pic 8: 100 votes
Pic 9: 91 votes
Pic 10: 202 votes
Pic 11: 150 votes
Dagens Nyheter and Ekonominyheterna chose photo no 9 with only 91 votes while Dagens Industri (photo on front page, not in the article) used a photo that is similar (but not identical) to photo no 1, the most popular photo by far. Should that indicate that Dagens Industri picked the best photo? Well, maybe you shouldn’t always give people what they want, but admit that it is a fun test. And I wonder if Yahoo News have illustrated their article with photo no 1 because it got the most votes? If so, it’s a nice example of how you can include readers in the production of news.
Oh, and by the way. BBC got their (web tv) reports from no other than – Jonny Dymond:
“The diamond, about the size of a golf ball, is the 15th largest ever discovered. Jonny Dymond reports from Belgium.”
Tags: diamonds, photography, foto, nyheter. Ping.