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News organisations are middlemen in the context of information systems. They have a job and mandate to collect information and in turn “repackage” it and serve the wider public.
It is how news organisations present textual and visual data that defines corporate style, and by extension, identity.
When presenting news to the public, newspapers have two main objectives.

Firstly, newspapers have to satisfy stakeholders through consistencies in editorial content, “political correctness” and aesthetic appeal.
Secondly and more importantly, newspapers have to ensure that the systems they use and the manner in which they present news combine to present to readers responsible and highly effective packages of information.

Effectiveness is measurable scientifically using textual and visual analysis techniques such as semiotics.
A significant figure in the field of semiotics, Roland Barthes says the meaning in any semiotic analysis, which he termed signification, is embedded in two layers.

The first layer called denotation is the most obvious message and is uncovered through a superficial inspection of a composition.
Denotation answers the question, “Who or what is depicted?”

The first layer of meaning only answers the basics, which newspapers do well to present as introduction to each package of information they present to the public.

The second and more complex layer manifest in an image in semiotics in the connotation, the latent meaning of the image that is less obvious and sub-textual.

The connotation or signified meaning of the image attempt to answer the question, “What ideas and values are expressed through what is represented and through the way in which it is represented?”

Barthes views the connotation as the second order meaning of the signifier.
The connotative meaning of an image is largely arbitrary, specific to one culture though it frequently has an iconic dimension.
To Zimbabwean national newspapers, the question would be, “Is what they present well understood by the diverse cultures that make up their potential or established market?”

News in newspapers used to be about the two layers Barthes identified.
But competition with the digital revolution is changing the face of newspapers, perhaps for the better.

The emergence of video technology as a cheap, widely accessible form of communication has presented a layer seldom used effectively in newspapers – emotional content.

Emotion is a psychological phenomenon, and it is easy to induce or replicate it using moving pictures that have the benefit of stimulating memory or experience with motion, sound and visual clarity.

Three-dimensional television has already shown that more dimensions can be added to visual presentation to enhance contextual meaning and provoke an emotional response.

For newspapers, lacking the advantages of video does not mean emotional content may not be expressed.
Photographs, graphics, page layout and illustrations have as much, if not more potential of transferring emotional content to newspaper readers.

Clever use of colour may improve the emotional value of information because each colour has a psychological effect that can be directly linked to human behaviour.

Black colour around or within information regarding the death of a known, respectable person ties with the sombre feeling associated with mourning and hollow pain.

Sports photography has the propensity to discharge emotional strands.
Sports fans identify with photographs of their teams in action every time, though they depict the same old faces they have known and seen for a long time.

The pictures’ appeal lies in context.
Newspaper photographs that support a viewpoint, fact or stance at as complements with the ability to make readers feel like they were eye-witnesses to whatever event discussed.

Visuals in newspapers are only significant if the feeling transferred to readers shares similarities with the feeling from when the news was gathered.

It is pointless for a newspaper to tell its readers about a dramatic win by one big team over another when the accompanying picture lacks theatrical elements that tie a visual and text into one.

Visual content may also be heightened by use of persuasion techniques in news presentation.
Analogy, the comparison of one situation, person or event to another with reasonably similar characteristics provides context and comparative analytical standard that makes information very clear.

A picture of a slim, small cellphone placed on the palm of an adult’s hand immediately registers in the brain of a reader as a desirable device.

There are times when newspaper content is emotionally persuasive not because of what it says, but because of when it is delivered.
Newspapers need to take advantage of the immediacy of their message to ensure that whoever it is directed to it is as fluent as it sounded as primary data during news gathering.

Media content reflects the social, political, economic, and technological environment of the media system in which they are created.
The biggest challenge for newspapers is not how to collect news, but how to present whatever they gather into packages relevant and effective in the societies they serve.

Good news presentation techniques ensure that readers relive the experiences of the original event.
High emotional value in information pieces is the final layer of meaning that, without it, newspapers are similar to news reading where standard vocals are employed to present information with diverse feeling.