In a multimedia encyclopedia, such as Microsoft's Encarta, some 10,000 images take up 90 percent of the bits, but supply perhaps one-100th of the information. Most of the work and the worth are in the words. Supremely the masters of words, newspapers can add cosmetic pictures, sounds and video clips far more easily than TV or game machines can add reporting depth, expertise, research and cogent opinion. More profoundly, the domonetics of the new technologies strongly favors text-based communications. Video is most effective in conveying shocks and sensations and appealing to prurient interests of large miscellaneous audiences.
TV news succeeds because of timeliness and vividness.
Compared with TV imagery, news photos tend to be late and lame. Nonetheless, for all its power and influence, broadcast television news is a dead medium, awaiting early burial by newspapers using new technologies. It is entirely a negative rule. The reason for it is not that the audience desires no more than two minutes of coverage of stories of interest. On any matter deeply interesting to the viewer, two minutes is much too little.