[Leica] Breaking news in B&W

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

Mark comments:

"I did walk into my apartment building last night and there was a newspaper

on the floor in the mail area and the cover  shot was black and white. It

was the NY Times. So people are still seeing breaking news in black and

white."

>From what I understand of the newspaper business, there is no particular
merit in B&W other than convenience. Editors choose photos and configure the
front page to sell papers. In the UK it is either nude cuties, or a scandal
involving the Royal family. In the U.S. it is either a horrendous murder or
unexpected sports or political results. Back in the day B&W was the quickest
(and only) way to get a picture on the front page while the news was hot.
During my brief tenure as a photog for the Boston Globe we would snap a 4x5
photo of a spectacular final quarter goal in a Celtics basketball game, soup
it in a dip tank on the way to the office in a taxi, pass the wet negative
to the Editor who cut it to size with a scissors, run it down to the
engraving room elves who had a halftone plate on the press within 10
minutes. The newsboys were hawking papers showing the winning goal as the
fans filed out of the Boston Garden. It took only 30 minutes from taking the
picture to getting the paper on the streets. It would have been impossible
with the color processes available in the 50s. I don't know much about
today's digital technology but printing and distributing a newspaper still
takes time. Of course it could be done in an instant on the internet.

Larry Z