What is the significance of photographs in newspapers? And why has colour become so....?

Question

...important?

Answer 1

People see in color and relate more to color photos.  The reason they often have B/W photos is that it is much more expensive to print, do not necessarily transfer each color correctly, and they may not have the equipment to do the entire paper.

Answer 2

Let's go to some basic ideas in printing first.

Usually a standard printed material should be either in 2 colours (black/white) or 4 colours (black/red/yellow/blue), depending on the purpose. The more colours your use, the more expesnive the printing cost.

BLK/WHT is the very basic printing and it is enough for plain-text or text-dominant material. 4-colour is usually applied to images, and virtually all newspapers in the world are using 4-colour to print charts, photos and stimulated graphics. However, colour is in principle a complex category (guess whether you have heard of Pantone, unarguable the worldwide-recognized colour standard), and use 4 colours are insufficient to display refined images.

So what is the main purpose for including a photo in a news story? It is simply because readers can get a better idea on an issue, such as a photo on the damage of a natural disaster can tell us the level of destruction.

Certainly not all news story require photos, but appropriate use of photos in news story can draw more attention, especially when people can spare less time to read nowadays.