Having worked in a few newsrooms thus far in my amateur journalistic career, one of the things I have noticed is the inherent tension between reporters and photographers. On a personal level, they often get along. But professionally, it's an interesting situation. We're talking two very different breeds of people.

Often it's the bitter reporter irritated that the photographer gets to wear jeans to work or the photographer's insistence that a photo must be a certain size, with a certain crop and tone, and on a color page to look good. I was clearly the reporter in this duo.

But what is even more astonishing than the occasional interaction is the often lack thereof. Communication between the two departments can be (and often is) a tiring task. From pure viewing of the paper this past week, I'm going to wager a guess that either communication is lacking or it has been an incredibly slow week for photos. Perhaps it's a combination of the two. Mayor Dave graced the page how many times this week?

In the past five issues of The Badger Herald, there were only two dominant photos on the front page. One was of Mayor Dave deep in thought and the other was of the pumpkin/pier collapsing extravaganza. Well done on both of the photos.

The news section should take a lesson from the sports section though. The sports section has had dominant photos and excellent photos every day this past week. Granted an action football shot is naturally slightly more exciting than the speaker photo, I understand.

But there have been excellent opportunities for news photos as well. A demonstration on Library Mall Monday was interesting to watch and the photo the Herald ran was decent. However, the caption below was completely inappropriate. The cutline didn't mention anything about the message these people were trying to send.

Their signs, dancing, fliers and music were not for Columbus Day but rather to celebrate indigenous people. This was a very anti-Columbus Day event. The cutline simply read that Monday marked a dual-holiday in Wisconsin with Brett Favre Day and Columbus Day.

I'm sure this was not malicious, but is still a large error at that. And one the Herald should have run a clarification for in Wednesday's paper. There have also been a few sloppy attribution errors in the past week. An old Herald photographer was credited for a photo and Associated Press photos were attributed in two separate ways in the same issue.

Mistakes are made, deadline is tight and the nights are long. I know the drill but even as a reporter I've come to realize how amazingly important photos are in a strong newspaper. Consistency is also important for readers in displaying a professional product day in and day out.

Let's make the photos dominant, clear, properly attributed and captioned appropriately. Reporters always believe what they do is more important than what photographers do and vice versa. But all I can say is this: without the words there would be no newspaper and without the photos, readership would decline rapidly. Photos draw readers in and thus have to be sharp.

The University of Wisconsin lacks a photojournalism program and yet a few very strong photographers roam the campus on a daily basis. Largely self-taught, these individuals do an excellent job and the Herald is lucky to employ many of them. Just make sure their talent gets put to work. I know the grind. Get those photo requests in.

Cristina Daglas, former editor in chief of The Badger Herald, is now the paper's ombudsman. Readers are encouraged to e-mail thoughts, criticisms and observations of the paper to [email protected] or call her at (608) 257-4712 ext. 168. Her column appears every Thursday on this page.