Charles M Blow, infographic columnist

Yesterday I knew two news of big importance from Alberto Cairo. First, Charles M. Blow leaves National Geographic and get back to The New York Times. This is just another (although very important) of the great amount of movements we're having on the infographics scene. But the real new is that he does it as'inforaphic columnist'. Here's his first column:



The New York Times is used to have graphics on its opinion section, as it did with its famous (and sometimes polemic) OP charts. But this is a step further. Is an infographics artist as columnist, the graphic made column. But it has one problem. Alberto uploaded on his blog the column as it was published:



And I agrre with him on the problem. The graphic should talk by itself. The text shouldn't benecessary. Maybe that's the next step.

But I would like to highlight a sentece from Cairo's analysis:

The infographics community has spent decades complaining about the little respect that directors and staff writers have to information visualization, Blow keeps showing what should be obvious: respect always should begins by ourselves. The graphics department of the NYTimes has earned the importance they have inside and outside the newsroom; step by step, story by story, always struggling for a bigger rigor, bigger quality, an increasing seriousness, defining the bounds between art and visual information. To the point that someone thinked that, oh miracle, a graphic artist could write on the opinion section, at the same page that Krugman, Kristof or Herbert. Blow, a 'grahic columnist' is just the culmination of a process started years ago.