We've seen the Globe go overboard with graphics before — an interactive feature on how to walk on the ice, an in-depth diagram of a bird brain — but this one takes the cake.

It's a great story.  Two guys basically walking down a street in Lawrence happen to be passing by when a baby falls out of a third-floor window.  Better than a piano, right?  They catch the kid, and the next day they're on the first page, big photo, above the fold, happy ending.  That's the kind of news everybody needs these days.

But I'm not sure how many maps and graphs we need along with it.  The Globe gives us no less than six, including the one taking up about half of the front page of the print edition...


I mean, this is basically a diagram of a guy crossing the street.  But wait!  There's more! LOTS MORE!...


I mean, Christ, where's the Grassy Knoll? 

A picture (not to mention six) isn't always worth a thousand words, y'know?

Here's what happened:

Robert Lemire is standing outside Mano's Pizza talking on his cell phone.  He hears a baby cry. He looks up, to the triple-decker across the street and sees a baby dangling from the window.  he bolts across the street, shouts up at the apartment: "There's a baby out the window!" 

Alex Day is sitting in a first-floor apartment and hears the commotion. He runs outside, sees Lemire standing below the window, looking up, as the toddler falls.  "He pretty much got the top and I got the diaper end, or the bottom half, or whatever you call it," as Lemire sums it up.

Hardly a thousand words, but gripping enough.  And the pictures add nothing to the drama.  So what gives?  Is it a union thing?  Is there some quota of interactive features that has to be met?  Is this about print's inferiority complex in an age of moving pictures?  Is it some compulsive need to dissect and diagram everything?  Or is this more of the Heralding of the Globe?  A cynical, overblown, above-the-fold attempt at local-man-catches-falling-baby populism? 

Whatever, it's a little condescending.

No question these guys are heroes.  The article, audio interviews, and pictures of Lemire and Day tell the story.  But the over-the-top graphics seem a desperate ploy by the Globe to garner some of the glory for itself, as if the additional pomp of gratuitous interactive graphics will appeal to readers voracious for inspiring tales of local heroes. 

I don't know about you, but I know what a three-decker looks like.  They're all over the city.  I used to live in one.  And I can visualize crossing the street without the assistance of interactive graphics, too.  I mean, what do they think we are?...


...bird brains?