It’s only June, but the award has to go to whoever does this at the Economist. Like the Atlantic, its only rival I know of in this underrated area of magazine publishing, the Economist doesn’t use a lot of photos but the ones it does use are excellent.
Last week’s issue had an editorial on the corruption within FIFA and Sepp Blatter’s somewhat inadequate response to outsiders’ expressions of disquiet. The first paragraph is:
Whether he possesses a bottomless capacity for self-delusion or simply breathtaking cynicism, Sepp Blatter’s performance at a press conference earlier this week was beyond parody. Asked whether recent corruption allegations meant that the governing body of the world’s most popular game was in crisis, the Swiss 75-year-old president of FIFA, replied: “What is a crisis? Football is not in a crisis. We have just seen a beautiful Champions League final with Barcelona, with fair play. We are only in some difficulties. And they will be solved inside our family.” Mr Blatter’s attempt to link the sublime skills of the European champions with the moral squalor of the outfit he has run for the past 13 years was true to form. His uncontested re-election (after the removal of his only rival, Qatar’s Mohamed Bin Hammam, amid bribery charges) a couple of days later for a fourth four-year term was depressing for anyone who cares about the “beautiful game”.
The rest is here. The point is, as Cactus Kate might say, troughing.
2 comments:
The Dominion's business section used to do a great line in silly photos, presumably because there's only so often you want to show a CEO in a construction helmet. One which I particularly enjoyed was a story about how the government was going to 'look into' the workings of the telecommunications industry (or similar), illustrated by a photo of a hippo looking into the mouth of another hippo.
And the Herald business section did some great literal pix for a few years, er, maybe a decade ago, but less amusingly. I could never tell if they were ironic, so probably they weren't.
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