Rolling Stone - The editors fucked up w/ that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev photo
I think it adds nothing to the story and actually distracts from it.
I would have used a post-arrest photo. OR, I might have turned the photo they used into a photo illustration to give a sense of how sinister the guy had become.
Below is one kind of treatment the photo might have been given. Thoughts?
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I get what they were trying to do. They were trying to reach back to a time before the guy was a bomber. They were trying to strike a contrast between a handsome, promising young man and the "monster" he became. But with that photo, you didn't see "monster," or any sense of change. Standing alone, it was just a "hunky" (and kind of cheesy) photo.
The story was serious and really got across the turn the guy took. Near the beginning, we see this fairly powerful quote:
I would want the photo to reflect the "alternative reality" Tsarnaev fell into. I don't know if my treatment is exactly right. But I do think an illustration-type approach would work better. Rolling Stone took an approach like that with Charles Manson:
... but I probably would have sent that to the graphics editor with a note that said "what do you think about this direction? How do you feel about doing something like this, only better? Is this too graphic? Do you have a better idea?"
I have never been a "designer" per se. I have been an editor who was lucky enough to work with designers willing to indulge my ideas. They would usually improve upon them or steer me to something different, once I got the conversation going. It was great because I knew the story because I would be working with the writer. And the graphics editor really knew design.
Often, a note of the kind I mentioned above would be returned with an entirely different idea that was better than mine. That was the joy of the give and take in the newsroom. I really miss that. 
