CNBC Two-Way Street

Published: Monday, 14 Sep 2009 | 1:27 PM ET

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Allen Wastler
Managing Editor, CNBC.com

Sorry Michigan. We didn't mean to make you look ... squalid. But we did.

It wasn't intentional. You should see the scramble around here sometimes as we try to come up with art for our slideshows. It gets particularly frenetic when the material is news related.

That was the case with our latest foreclosure slideshow ... the monthly numbers from RealtyTrac showing which states have the highest foreclosure rates. You have to pull representative art for each of the top 10 states pretty quickly.

And so we had assembled beauty shots of the various states ... a sunset in Florida, the night

Photo by: Erik Twight Your eye searches for the obligatory derelict wino to complete the scene, doesn't it?

lights of Denver, the snowy peaks of Utah and Idaho mountains, and then ... a dilapidated house in a blighted Michigan town. (I've included the offending photo, separate from the landscape pagent, for information purposes).

Some readers pointed out the unfair juxtaposition ...

Michigan was the only one with an ugly, negative picture and all the other states had beautiful, picturesque scenes. Why is that? — Sonya

One of the potent things about journalism on the Internet is the ability to weave words, pictures, sound and video into a more textured report. Such multi-media associations can convey deeper meaning. But they can also make a false or unfair impression. Michigan, like any other state, has picturesque landscapes. And any other state has a boarded up house. But putting such a house next to a parade of mountains and skylines is not fair.

We've changed the artwork to something more on equal footing with the other state pictures. Again, sorry Michigan. We didn't mean to add to your problems.

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