In my opinion, interactive graphics are one of the best perks to come out of the new direction of news and the Internet. They are one of the few ways that news organizations have actually been able to make the news more, well, interactive. News has traditionally been a story told in a linear fashion; however, information graphics allow the reader to use the information that a journalist has gathered in order to tell a story that interests them.
The fact that readers now have more of a choice to decide what they get out of the news brings up an interesting question though; just how interactive should news be? The job of a journalist is to gather information relevant to a subject or event, and use it to tell a story. If journalists gather tons of raw information, but do not put it in perspective, then I do not believe they are doing their job. People read the news in order to find out why the things that are happening are important to them. I think that it is great to offer people the ability to discover things for themselves, but do not let this new ability take the place of good journalism. Interactive graphics are a great addition to any story, but it is not a substitute, and it is not an excuse for lazy journalism.
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