Brenda Laurel discovered this counterintuitive fact when, developing avatars for Apple, she learned that cartoon images of people made better avatars than photographis of real people. They were more “believable” and more “trustworthy.”

Lesson for news media: the more it tries to re-create the reporter’s experience for readers, the less involving the story will be. Leave the camera at home and spend some extra space on telling the story in fact-driven narrative.