Story and photo - are they a good fit?

Some readers are pleased to find their pictures on the front page of The News & Observer. Leah Willis of Clayton is not one of them. Willis' photo was used Wednesday to illustrate a Page One story headlined "Playoff price hike angers fans." Gist of the story: the Carolina Hurricanes have jacked up their ticket prices for the Stanley Cup playoff games, and longtime fans aren't happy.

The picture showed Willis in a bright red Hurricanes jersey picking up tickets at the RBC Center box office. Good picture to go with a good story.

Problem is: Willis was not unhappy with the price increases, and for good reason. She works for Gale Force Holdings, the RBC Center operator. When the photograph was shot, before the Canes game Monday night against New Jersey, she was not buying but picking up tickets left for her at the window. So imagine Willis' surprise when she saw Wednesday's paper.

"I'm just flabbergasted," she said. "I work part-time for the arena. I find my picture on the front page with a negative article."

I understand her concern. This was a flub on the part of the newspaper, and it should not have happened. The N&O ran a clarification in Thursday's paper saying "She is not angry about price increases for playoff tickets."

Mostly, this was a matter of bad communication. The photographer, in the "cutline" information he submitted with the picture, did not inform editors that Willis worked for the arena and wasn't unhappy.

That was problem one. Problem two is that no editor questioned whether Willis was indeed an aggrieved ticket buyer. "I think this is a lesson in the editing process," said Photo Editor Robert Miller. "We as photo editors didn't connect the dots. How does the cutline match up with the photograph in the context of the story?"

Problem number three was that, although several unhappy ticket buyers were quoted in the story, Willis wasn't one of them. It's not typical to illustrate an article with a picture of someone not in the story, and that should have been a red flag to editors as well.

Why wasn't there a picture of an unhappy Canes fan? Because they were interviewed too late to be photographed, Miller said, and Willis was conveniently at the ticket window when the N&O photographer showed up.

All in all, a comedy of errors, unfunny to Willis. "Even if I didn't work for the arena, I still would have been unhappy, because I'm not down on the Canes," she said. It's reasonable for the team to raise prices, Willis said, as the games become hot tickets.

We should note that, strictly speaking, nothing was inaccurate about the picture and caption. The photograph was fine and the information in the caption was accurate as far as it went: "Leah Willis, left, gets tickets at the RBC Center window." But in conjunction with the headline, they left a misimpression with readers that Willis was an angry fan.

From the newspaper's perspective -- but certainly not from Willis' -- this was an atypical mistake that might be regarded as an anomaly. But the incident does highlight photography issues that readers might want to be aware of. There have been other instances in the past year where people were unhappy about pictures in the paper.

Several cases involved children who were portrayed in circumstances that their parents found unflattering. Example: Three girls happily skipping home from elementary school, accompanying a story in which their neighborhood was described as elitist. I got an earful from a mom about that.

Another photo showed a young woman reading a book under a tree on a lovely spring day. She received two obscene phone calls the next day, according to a friend.