The opening line was funny, because the Wall Street Journal famously had no photos long into the color photo era of newspapers. When did they add them? Sometime in the late 90s/2000s?

Then again, financial news doesn't really lend itself to photojournalism. A photo isn't going to make the story of a bankruptcy or merger more believable. The rest of the media would show an exasperated trader on the day of a market crash, but at the level of traders some will benefit from a bull market and others will benefit from a bear. So it's just pointless showing the photo.

I always liked the hand drawings of people referred to in the stories.

If we could get rid of useless stock photos, the world would be a better place. An article about headaches doesn't need a picture of someone with a headache. WE KNOW WHAT A HEADACHE IS. An article about someone arrested doesn't need a picture of a generic crime scene. An article about Facebook doesn't need a photo of a monitor at an angle showing Facebook.

But apparently it drives engagement because people can't sustain their focus on text-only media?

RE ".... the Wall Street Journal famously had no photos long into...."

Made me think of how I dislike articles, " often from newspapers " that seem to add (often several) photos only weekly related to article content when in my opinion only a few ( 1 or 2 ) are useful. I use a Image on/off extension, and only load images when I'm reading an article and it seems "... interesting enough ..." A side effect of such a browser extension is it reduces PC .resources. I also sometimes save a page with out images ..

Cook’s Illustrated continued to have black-and-white photos in the inside of the magazine up until the late 2010s.

It seemed to be a stylistic choice that kept the focus on the cooking lore and knowledge rather than making the magazine about food porn. Their “cooking tips” section continues to be drawn in pen-and-ink style.

Without researching, I would say the 2000s. They held off for a long time. As you suggest, it was a somewhat stodgy paper for ages that didn't really need photos prior to getting into more "lifestyle" and such topics later.