When I feel like keeping an eye on the news during my work day I tend to turn to MSNBC.com. Not because I particularly care about the coverage either way, but because the overall layout serves my functional needs.

There’s a downside to the layout though. Their editorials and articles often feature a small picture of the author. And sometimes those authors are just plain ugly. Right mingers.

“Why would you care,” I hear you asking. “How could you be so shallow?” We all deal with ugly people every day of course. I’ve been on a couple of projects over the past year led by Frogmen, or descendents thereof. But try reading some of the articles they have. Everything is going fine until you scroll down a bit to read more and then suddely OMFG IT’S A DAMN TROLL! Oh, no, it’s just the author. You try to read on but your eyes keep straying back to the little freakshow. You just can’t move past it.

And sometimes it’s not that they’re ugly, it’s just that they’re a tad creepy. For instance, they have a regular editorial about sex called Sexploration. It’s interesting to read and provides a lot more coverage regarding the why’s of it all. But the author there looks like he’s out of a bad 70s porn flick. It’s like being at a video store browsing and there’s a dude in a trenchcoat spending WAY too much time in the adult section that you can’t ignore.

I’m not saying they’re bad columnists. In general they’re actually pretty good (well, aside from the tech people. It’s like they’re reporting from 2002). But please take the pictures down. Even the attractive ones, if that’s what it takes. It’s just not necessary.