Quick addendum to this morning's item about the Strib's record-breaking Favre traffic. Of the 5.4 million page views Startribune.com received yesterday, 900,000 were for its Favre photo galleries. That was roughly 40 times the traffic of the site's video offerings.

I've been meaning to do a column on whether the Media Depression has punished photographers more than those of us who work with words. Anecdotal reports from freelancers about savage pay cuts, and wholesale staff cuts, suggest this is the case.

There are all kinds of reasons, from shrinking papers and the video craze to a belief that reporters' (or amateurs') shots are acceptable and cheaper substitutes for trained pros.

Still, the pageview-hiking benefit of the slideshow is well-known to many local sites, and as the Favre example proves, there's still power in the still image. One would hope future resources would be deployed accordingly.