Typography as symbol

Typography — all of it — has symbolic value, a symbolic power. Most type is meant to be read, however; it is a medium, mediating communication for and to us. Type that screams, “Look at me! Look at me!” rarely is a good type choice. Readers should rarely even notice the type, like referees or umpires, instead interacting immediately with the message the type is carrying or delivering.

So, for Monday, Visual Rhetoric students will do one of two typography mini-projects. Half of the class in each section will imagine themselves a part of one of the following two scenarios:

1. You are running for election for president/emperor/empress/czar of BerryLand, a fictitious wonderland of 28,000 (really noisy) acres in NW Georgia. Develop or choose a typography you will use in your campaign, just as Obama chose Gotham, a type designed by Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

Type up and submit a paragraph explaining why you chose what you did, and how it symbolizes or communicates your values or qualities as a candidate. Think of key words, like “trust,” “transparency,” “stability” or “change.” Spend some time thinking about what qualities you would want associated with your campaign. Spend some time researching type sets. Include a sample of your type choice with your submission.

OR

2. You have just been put in charge of Google’s Android phone project, a handheld phone made to compete with the iPhone. You have to choose or develop a type the phone will exclusively use. This is type, then, for a very small display space. Type up and submit a paragraph explaining why you chose what you did, and how the type is appropriate if not ideal for the phone’s display. Include a sample of your type choice with your submission.

Where to find type sets:

• Hoefler & Frere-Jones (which just unveiled “Tungsten”)
• Identifont
• Thinking With Type
• Periodic Table of Type (longish download)
• Type Quiz
• Design your own type (from your handwriting — Terry?)

Due: Bring in to class Wednesday, Oct. 21

Persuasion in advertising

For our next safari in Visual Rhetoric, half of us will be looking for print ads, specifically one that uses stereotype and one that conspicuously avoids stereotype.

For the latter, this should be an ad that could have used a stereotype but that did not, or one that turns a stereotype on its head (overweight or “thick” or eldlerly fashion models, for example, or objectifying men). Don’t simply clip an ad that doesn’t have a stereotype in it, like an ad with simply a photo of a bottle of Coke.  You want an ad that goes out of its way to avoid stereotype or to counter stereotype.

For your reports to class, clip or copy the ad and type up a statement identifying the stereotype or counter-stereotype.

The other half of us will be viewing an hour of national network programming, either during primetime or during a live, prominent sports event, and charting the ads for their persuasive methodologies. This means viewing the ad and noting what of the Aristotelian model of persuasion the advertiser is employing. This model offers three components to persuasion:

• Ethos: credibility of the source (look for celeb endorsers)
• Logos: the logical arguments used to persuade (good luck finding this one)
• Pathos: emotional appeals used to persuade (this is mostly what you will see)

As you’re viewing, ask yourselves: What did I learn about financial planning in this ad (or insurance, or cars or trucks)? What did I learn about anything? How much of the appeal is pure emotion, an experience. (In terms of emotions used or stirred by advertisers, aspiration or hope, belonging and fear are the favorites.) Where is there logos? Where does the ethos come from? The brand? A celebrity? Or the mere fact that it’s on TV, which is a circular logic.

But for your report to the class, simply chart the product being sold and what was used to attempt to persuade (ethos, logos and/or pathos). The emphasize here is the exercise of thinking about what we’re viewing and how we’re being persuaded.

“Get over it! You’re too sensitive!”

Inspired again by you in Visual Rhetoric, I want to leverage the blog to explore what is perhaps a widely shared view: That individuals and groups who feel slighted or offended should just get over it, that they are being too sensitive, that we shouldn’t be so concerned with what we might call ‘political correctness.’ This grew out of our examination of the Popeye’s ad featuring the four college students.

Before I ask for your reactions, a few thoughts:

First, as I shared in class, a general principle holds that if a group sees that there is the possibility that they are being insulted by another, it will. This is how we are hard-wired. We are always on guard. We like to think the best of FILL IN THE BLANK HERE (Northerners, white people, the French, whomever), but we don’t.

I will default to my worst fear. For an African American viewing the Popeye’s Annie, he or she will fear you are perpetuating Aunt Jemima. Consider if Annie were white. The black stereotype and historical antecedent disappears. The default fear is gone. (We still might think about the portrayal of gender.)

So if we think there is any chance of intent to slight us, we will feel slighted. We live in a culture of indignation. Some are hacked off because we got it wrong. Some are hacked off because we got it right. This is the key: We should care about the first; we don’t necessarily have to lose sleep about the second.

Second, is it up to us to determine when another people group should or should not feel insulted, regardless of intent? When we don’t share that group’s history, culture or even language, how can we judge? We do not relinquish our own “right” to decide when we’ve been slighted, I wonder how it is that we are so quick to decide for others.

Third, our goals in the course are ethical decision-making, ethical image-making, ethical communication. And ethics requires a process. We need diverse people in the room. We also need a process for systematic dialogue and conversation, so we can be deliberate, thoughtful and persuasive. So we can say what we mean, not something else. To discuss how a group or groups might be unintentionally offended, alienated or even victimized by our messages costs very little before the message goes out. As we’ve seen in our in-class examples, it can become quite costly after.

Perhaps a good guide for us is the Keith Woods quotation on the board Friday: ‘Appreciate my uniqueness, but treat me the same.’ This gets to the universal sameness of difference and diversity. Don’t we all share this sentiment?

So how do we better appreciate difference? We all are guilty to some degree of staying in our comfort zone, of failing to notice much less engage with the ‘Other,’ with those outside our group, whoever that might mean. I have a trio of exercises that will help us better appreciate difference and what it means to be on the outside looking in, exercises that get increasingly difficult. Don’t worry; all of them should be fun, if you buy into the point or ‘takeaway’ here.

So, to get us started, the first exercise:

Write a response to this post that tells the rest of us of a time when you were the ‘Other,’ a time when you didn’t fit in, when you were excluded. Say something about what that felt like, and about what you wish the dominant or ‘in’ group knew or considered or valued. This exercise is required.

Deadline: Friday afternoon, or when Mountain Day begins.

Some reflections on writing

I’ve pushed through nine of the class writing samples so far. Today proved a good day, in part because of low humidity, temps in the 70s and a big shade tree just outside my office here at Berry. I sat with five of you on an oak bench under the big tree, and I brought a Romeo y Julieta robusto and a glass of sweet tea.

So I am prepared to pass along some carefully considered advice. These reflections don’t indicate frustration or disappointment at all. I’m very pleased with your work. But this is my job, to help you improve. To push you. To demand better. You will be different writers in December, and no one will celebrate your development more than me.

So here goes.

First, I am announcing a general ban on dashes. I mention in the textbook that they typically indicate laziness, and the evidence of this past week proves me right. Dashes in combination with parentheses? Not on my watch! This ban will force us to more carefully consider our punctuation and, therefore, pacing in our writing.

Second, a temporary ban on the word “was” and “were.” Nearly everyone is falling into the passive voice trap described in Chapter 1. Banning “was” and “were” will force us all to use strong action verbs and to write in an active voice. Just try it for a few weeks and judge then whether this “was” a good idea or not.

The most urgent advice I have is for us to show rather than tell. Rather than vague, general, vapid statements about “big influences” or “being changed forever” or “remembering vividly,” take us to a particular event, a singular moment, and describe the heck out of it. Take us there. Help us see what you saw, feel what you felt, hurt like you hurt. This takes rich, multi-sensory detail. One vignette or anecdote or richly recounted moment is worth a thousand general statements. Some wrote of terrible loss. What did the person delivering the terrible news look like? What did he or she wear? What were you doing when you heard the doorbell or picked up the phone? What happened next? What did you do next? Who did you share the news with first? Why?

Most of you need a hook in your beginning to invest your reader emotionally in the story you are about to tell. We (the readers) do not want to feel like we sat down on a bus stop bench next to Forrest Gump. We have things to do, so you will have to reel us in. This takes time. Remember that we don’t care about your childhood, at least not yet. Your job is to stir that care and persuade us into sharing your perspective.

Think about your ending when writing (or revising) your beginning. You are looking for a narrative arc or circularity in your story. This requires knowing your theme and great discipline in sticking to that theme. This also means ditching the straight chronology, which is the easiest way to organize your writing but is rarely very satisfying. Organizing thematically takes work.

Most also struggle with comma usage, which is no surprise. It is why I require everyone to have a writer’s handbook nearby at all times. Independent clauses require commas to separate them, so look in particular for these little devils. Almost all of us need to review the comma rules.

If your piece lags or stalls a bit, consider some dialogue, which immediately injects energy and personality into the narrative. Even internal dialogue can do this.

Well, that is plenty for now, and I’m about out of tea. But please take these suggestions to heart. This is what tough love feels like.

To writing well.

Mid-week reflections in JoMC 711

My thoughts will run a bit longer than Blackboard’s “Announcements” can accommodate, so I felt it wise to utilize WordPress’s discursive possibilities instead.

First, I am blown away by the caliber of this class cohort. So many of you are responsible for developing online content, managing social media, writing for print and for online, and editing in a variety of roles. And I see so many shared interests and perspectives. We have several recovering daily news reporters, a few broadcast TV journalists, a few in the healthcare industry, and several in government and education. And we’ve yet to hear from eight more signed up for the class. You all are a most impressive group.

A few also are looking for permanent positions in communication, so I hope we can network and identify for each other opportunities out there. I also hope we offer those on the job search a safe haven in which to be encouraged and find support.

My goal and mission, therefore, will be to do all I can to foster a learning community in which we can learn from one another. The course has been wildly successful in this in the past, and I so no reason why it can’t be again this semester.

Second, a few thoughts on writing. Someone mentioned in the introductions suffering from the mythical (or, for writers, fictional) “writer’s block.” I understand where the person is coming from – we all struggle, I think, with the hard work of writing. But make no mistake – what we refer to as “writer’s block” is almost always merely an excuse. Can you imagine a plumber waking up in the morning, “Not today. I have plumber’s block”? My point, however crudely made here, is that we all have to work at writing, and we all can. It is a craft, one that can be taught and learned. We have to work at it every day, whether we feel inspired or – writer’s block – we don’t. We can’t manipulate inspiration – the wind. So when there is no wind, start rowing.

You’ll like this, David. When struggling with what to write, Ernest Hemingway admonished himself to “write something true.” He was a fiction writer. (When asked how he knew what to write, Faulkner replied that he saw his characters running across his typewriter.)

In Chapter 1, we do several drills and exercises. These are designed to help us begin thinking and living like writers, to begin deliberately working on our craft, on our skills as writers. The first writing sample is meant to be just long enough to reveal patterns, blind spots, weaknesses and pet practices. We will critique this writing, so I encourage everyone to begin developing an increasingly thick skin. Writing is (or can be) intensely personal. The first theme is very personal. We will be tempted, then, to take the criticism personally. Don’t. It’s ALL about the writing, and about becoming better at it. Go ahead and wince, spit out a curse word or two, then, with a grain of salt, sift through the criticism (both your writing partner’s and mine) to see what can help you move forward.

I genuinely look forward to reading your writing beginning Monday, especially given the topic, which is a new prompt this semester. (Remember to use the one in BB and NOT the one listed in the textbook.) I will make writing partner designations by Monday for next week’s workshop. I will read each and every one, as well, so if you’re at the back of the bus, please be patient; I’ll get to yours, too.

In closing, remember the first commandment of writing, from fiction writing expert John Dufresne: “Sit your ass in the chair. Sit there daily.”

To writing well.

Notes from southern Maine

I’m writing from southern Maine, where the sun just peeked out for the first time in about 10 days. I’m attending a five-week National Endowment for the Humanities seminar on “The Rule of Law,” which asks questions such as,

• “Why are Americans so reverent of law and the rule of law?
• What does “rule of law” even mean? What does it include or exclude?
• When the LAPD is beating the crap out of Rodney King, are they “doing law”?
• Why is our legal system the particular way it is, rather than some other? (Think of how native Americans conceptualize property rights, as an example of a very different way.)
• What do the Bush administration torture memos and our responses to them tell us about the law, its limits, its aims, and about the sovereign (the people)?
• Can law understand itself outside its own bounds, outside the bounds of a legal reason defined by the practice of law?

These are just a few of the questions we’ve tossed around so far, and we’ve had industrial-strength help sorting out some possible answers. Our discussion leader list has so far included Austin Sarat, Paul Kahn, Jill Frank, Caroline Winterer and Deak Nabers.

I’m really fascinated with Paul Kahn’s observation that the project of law is essentially a project of reform, and that the term suggests a return to some pure ideal, that it must suggest a return to the Constitution for its legitimacy. The law looks to the past for its future, a reflex enshrined in the latin “stare decisis,” or “let the decision stand,” a principle that ensures only incremental change in the law as it strives to conserve itself. In other words, to create new law, as the U.S. Supreme Court inevitably does, it claims to be returning to a constitutional ideal, a return to its pristine, pure past.

Kahn’s critique is that this project occurs entirely within law, as the study of religion operated well into the 18th century. To study Christianity was to practice it, to attempt to reform it. A truly “objective” study of religion, from the outside, did not occur until the late 18th century, when departments of religion were organized in the academy. Anthropology, sociology and psychology also participate in this project, outside the normative reality or construct of religion. In law, however, the project is largely sealed off from the outside, with its project of reform occurring entirely within its bounds. Scholars recommend reforms, as I attempted in my articles, but we are ignored. Law schools perpetuate this insularity by being primarily if not exclusively about vocational training.

In my law articles, as in all law articles, I began with the assumptions that law needed to be reformed, that it could be reformed, that there is or should be some sort of natural progression in the law toward a better future, and that these reforms could occur, would occur within the law, by the law. My articles, in other words, never stepped outside the orb of law to ask larger questions about why the law in this country is the way it is, why it’s not another way, and why we reflexively accept and obey this rule of law, as a constituted whole. In other words, I never stepped outside of law’s practice. The law — our law — is 100% a construct. We made it that way. Why?

The question of torture demands answers outside the system of law. The Bush (Yee/Bybee) memos point to this in how ridiculously they attempt to reconcile torture or “rough interrogation” with adherence to the rule of law. In fact, re-terming it “rough interrogation” is an important move in attempting to bring the practice within the rule of law. Words and terms really matter, particularly in the law, for the law.

If it is in fact torture, it cannot by definition be lawful, at least not by U.S. or international law. It must be something else. When it does become something else, something “legal,” its practice can be juridified (rules can be drawn up to regulate it). Thus result the laughable “legal rules” for rough interrogation, such as how many seconds a captive can be submerged in the water, the lowest temperature that water can be, etc., etc.

The historical precedent for torture as irreconcilable with the rule of law is slavery, which Deak Nabers helped us unpack. How did we make a space within the rule of law for the institution of slavery?

This is just a taste, of course. I teach Media Law, so stepping back and asking some of these larger question is helping me to understand the historical, cultural and legal contexts for some of the weird law we (communication practitioners) face, particularly in the tort areas of libel and privacy intrusion.

This past week marked our midpoint, and today we have a big lobster bake at the University of New England, which is hosting the seminar. So it’s not all books and gab. If the sun can just hang in there a few more hours, I think I’ll take my Frisbee.

Dura lex, sed lex! (The law is tough, but it is the law.)

The view at Biddeford Pool, southern Maine. Surf’s up!

Digital Storytelling and a Brave New World

This post is primarily for my students in Digital Storytelling, but I’m writing with a larger audience in mind. Some of these students rightly pointed out that we haven’t been leveraging the blog much lately, and for that I take full responsibility. I could blame Liberty Tree Week@Berry, but there is always time to blog. Blogito, ergo sum. So here goes . . .

The purpose of this post is to show a sort of highlight reel of the course. Distilling from your final exams, there are several to present. As one student wrote, “I have learned more from this class, even without any tests, than from any other class this semester, and possibly since coming to Berry.” This is gratifying, because the “no test” policy is part of a larger strategy to create a learning (and doing) community somewhat divorced from the academic game (and violence) of grading and scorekeeping. Thanks to you all, this strategy worked, and to everyone’s benefit.

With that in mind, I’m happy to announce that the grades students see on VikingWeb will be exactly those you presented on the final exams. Congratulations to you all.

To the highlights:

• One student wrote that she learned ‘rapid adaptability.’ Great term (and an even better lesson to learn). She also learned to overcome pessimism toward the future of journalism by ‘discovering the art and privilege of truth seeking.’ Awesome. Truth seeking and reporting are  high honors indeed.
• Another wrote that she had learned ‘to be prepared for anything, for everything.’ Technology is a fickle friend — it breaks down and often behaves in unpredictable ways, so be prepared. She also said she learned that ‘layering is a good way to provide a wealth of information,’ and a great way to leverage online. Excellent.
• Just do it! Another with no interest in journalism prior to the course said she was grateful for exposure to ‘a new side of the communication major.’ Those with interest in journalism professionally reported a great experience ‘doing’ it rather than merely researching or discussing it.
• Nearly everyone celebrated our Friday morning discussions, and I would join in that lovefest. I really looked forward to our time together going ‘big picture.’ One student wrote, ‘I feel as if the class was like a therapy session, in that discussing problems with the media industry and the world helped us find possible solutions to the problems as well as encouragement to motivate a change.’
• Perhaps my favorite reflection was from someone who reported learning a great deal about herself. She said she learned she ‘can hold my own, that I can go out there and get the story.’ This is of course music to my ears. Berry students often undersestimate how vastly better prepared they are than many if not most of their counterparts nationally. Cross-trained, converged, adaptable and knowledgeable with so many tools and software, you guys are really muscular — ‘ripped’ in this metaphor.
• This student just mentioned also said she discovered that ‘there are a variety of ways to tell a story . . . that news doesn’t have to be linear,’ but that it can be multidimensional, multi-directional. ‘I learned I would have to get my hands into a variety of media and learn how to tell a story from a number of perspectives.’ She wrote that if she had stuck to her ‘I’m just a writer’ attitude, the learning could not have taken place. This student really got it!

Among the excellent suggestions for future iterations of the course:

• One-on-one mid-term conferences to discuss how a student is progressing and identifying specific things to work on. This is gold. I simply never thought of doing this, and it is so obvious.
• More leveraging of the blog, which several of you really liked. This continues the conversation from Friday mornings, allows the quieter ones to chime in, and provides us with a record of our discussions. I just dropped the ball on this one, as I said up top.
• More on managing the online content. We focused on developing the content but simply didn’t get to managing it very much. This is a valid criticism, and my response is simply the time issue. We spend about 37 hours together over the course of the semester. Things go wrong, and unanticipated changes must be made. We just flat out ran out of time on put-together. But we are in really good shape. Check the ARC URL in about two weeks, and you should see all of your content and a fairly complete, robust site that you each can use in portfolios and as an example of your work to show potential employers.
• Finally, at least two students reported that more direction would have helped. Yet, other students said the autonomy forced them to get it done, to be resourceful. I loved the fact that you all overcame, that you each learned what you needed to learn to produce quality stories, which you clearly did. The proof is always in the pudding.

Based on the products of your work and the comments in your reflections, excerpted here, the course was a phenomenal success. And we served a good cause with urgent need in the process. How cool is that?

The Lost Gutenbergs coming to Berry

Berry College’s Liberty Tree Week@Berry continues on Wednesday, April 29, with “The First Information Revolution: The Lost Gutenbergs,” a presentation on how a limited series of historically accurate, precise Gutenberg Bible reproductions were made.

Tim Yancey, master bookbinder, will present the 50-pound Bibles in various stages of production and explain how the project came about.

Providing historical context for the first information revolution will be Kathy McKee, professor of communication and former associate provost at Berry College.

After Yancey’s presentation, Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center in both Washington D.C., and in Nashville, will lead a short discussion about religious expression and freedom of information in America today.

The event begins at 6 p.m. in Berry College’s Science Auditorium. Admission is free, and cultural events credit is being offered.

The presentation is one of several events scheduled as part of the Liberty Tree Initiative program.

Yancey is a partner in Bookbinders Workshop, which launched in February 2007 to build the Lost Gutenbergs. He acquired a single set of the reproduction Gutenberg Bible pages by winning it at auction.

Along with partner Michael L. Chrisman, a world-renowned bookbinder and expert in book restoration and conservation, Yancey began the daunting task of researching and procuring the materials needed to restore the biblical texts and make them available to the public. Yancey and Chrisman then set out to investigate the possibility of purchasing and restoring the rest of the “lost” Gutenberg sets – 120 in all – missing since 1961.

In addition to directing the First Amendment Center, Policinski is a veteran journalist whose career has included work in newspapers, radio, television and online operations. He oversees operations and programs of the Center and is co-author of the weekly syndicated newspaper column, “Inside the First Amendment,” and executive producer and host of the national touring multimedia stage production, “Freedom Sings.”

McKee, who has been at Berry College since 1986, was recently appointed editor of Journalism & Communication Monographs by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. McKee also serves on the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal Mass Communication & Society and has reviewed for the Journal of Advertising and Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. She is also co-author of two books, Media Ethics: Cases & Moral Reasoning (Allyn Bacon Longman, 2008) and Applied Public Relations: Cases in Stakeholder Relations (Erlbaum, 2005).

The Liberty Tree Initiative is an informal coalition of educators, journalists, librarians, artists and authors with a shared interest in building awareness of the First Amendment through education and information. It was founded in partnership with the American Society of Newspaper Editors, with help and support from the Knight Foundation, the McCormick Foundation and the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University.

Expanded details on Liberty Tree Week@Berry >> Berry PR

Liberty Tree Week@Berry writing contest

Liberty Tree Week@Berry Writing Contest: Rebooting America

A call for entries

A sizeable number of Americans are unable to name their basic freedoms, and less than a third can name even the three branches of government. Only about 3% of those surveyed could name “petition” as one of the five freedoms in the First Amendment. Less than 20% named religion, press or assembly. Far more can name all of the “American Idol” judges or many if not most of the characters in “The Simpsons.”

Are we amusing ourselves to civic death?

The Liberty Tree Week@Berry essay contest, “Rebooting America,” invites undergraduate students to submit 1,000-word essays on one of three topics for a competition for cash prizes. First place will win $100; second place will take home $50; third place nets $25.

The contest, which is being administered in cooperation with the Honors Program at Berry, invites submissions on four issues or questions:

• Do news media in America have too much freedom to watchdog government and inform an electorate? Or not enough? Just the right amount? Argue for or against, for example, a strengthening of the Freedom of Information Act, for or against a reporter’s right to protect the confidentiality of an anonymous source, or for or against the impunity of publishing truthful information legally obtained.
• Seemingly every year, Congress introduces legislation to begin the process of amending the Constitution to explicitly prohibit the burning of the national flag. Argue for or against such legislation, discussing why an individual may or may not burn the national flag as “protected speech” under the First Amendment.
• Should the clearing a Campus Carrier rack of the “free” newspaper be considered theft? Argue for or against a proposed Georgia law making school newspaper theft a specific criminal offense.
• Does Berry’s speech code violate the First Amendment to the U.S Constitution? Several court cases nationally in the past 15 years have resulted in the abolishing of university speech codes, in particular hate speech codes. On the other hand, few would endorse hate speech as a responsible exercise of the right to expression. Examine Berry’s speech code and argue for or against its constitutionality.

Submit your entries for judging to Dr. Brian Carroll, electronically to bc AT berry.edu or snail mail to Box 299. Deadline is noon, Friday, May 1.

An ethical dilemma

Wow, it has been far too long since the last posting. This semester has been insane. My latest ‘excuse’ is Liberty Tree Week@Berry, a week of events we’ve planned for Berry here in Communication. It’s swallowed every discretionary moment, and much more. But it will be so worth it.

To our purpose: An ethical dilemma for my class of cross-platform content editors and producers. First, the scenario:

To hyperlink or not to hyperlink, that is the question

You are deciding for the AJC (& Web site), WSB TV (& Web site) or CNN (& Web site). Your audience: AJC – the Southeast; WSB TV – Georgia; CNN – the nation.

What: A new prime minister of Iraq has just been named, a Shiite who had been an outspoken critic of Saddam Hussein and had lived in exile before the American invasion of 2003.

Shortly after taking office in April 2009, he is kidnapped, along with five American journalists, by a rival Sunni faction. Several hours later, the kidnappers say they have hanged the prime minister to protest the execution of Hussein. The kidnappers don’t bother with cell phone video; they provide professional-looking video that shows the prime minister dropping through the platform. The video shows his head snapping off and his body, and head, falling to the floor.

The kidnappers have posted the video on their Web site, and American officials have independently confirmed that it shows what it says it does: the decapitation of the Iraqi official. But American officials are asking American news organizations not to link to the video because, they claim, doing so will help the kidnappers achieve their ends.

No American news site has linked to the site yet, but we, the editors at the AJC, are eager to do so. We in the newsroom meet to discuss our coverage. Our key questions: Will we include a link to the hanging video and, therefore, the kidnappers’ Web site, or not? Controversy is sure to follow whatever decision we make, so the second question: How will we explain our decision?

Remember: We are to maximize the truth, minimize harm and serve the public interest. These are our journalistic imperatives. And we are to conceive of ethical decision-making as a process. It’s not about whether you are a good, moral person or not.

So, for Monday, post a few sentences identifying your decision and justifying and explaining it. Nothing too lengthy.

To help you:

• Poynter’s ethical decision-making tool/step-by-step
• Poynter’s guidelines on linking policy
• Kristof on ethical dilemmas (Word .doc)