Comment by pwg
3 hours ago
> Having no map is weird.
Yes, a failure of both the journalist and the editor.
Sadly, this kind of failure is all too common. I encounter articles that often omit a photo of the "thing" the article is describing. This (no photo) might have made some sense fifty years ago in the heyday of paper print where including a photo was much more work. But today, for HTML publishing, it is just an indication of failure on the part of the publisher.
50 years ago was 1976. Pretty sure there was no particular problem incuding photos or illustrations in paper journalism at that time. Maybe for very low-budget newsletters it would have been.
That depends. For the most modern presses (1970s modern) it was no problem but many small newspapers still used the linotype and a press that couldn't handle pictures without much effort.
I think USA Today (1980) was considered repulsive not just because it was colorized and a newspaper but simply because it put more space/resources into illustrations than was considered tasteful. A typical paper would reserve photographers and illustrators for front page and significant stories.