Getting the front-page treatment

You may recall that a photo decision late yesterday pushed the story about vandalism to a high school in Hartline out onto the front page. There was a good photo and map, but the story didn’t get the brushing up it perhaps deserved.

Celebrating history

Features editor Pia Hansen sent a decades-old editorial cartoon around the table, intended to accompany a history column coming up tomorrow. In the cartoon, two Native American caricatures are depicted sprawled on train seats (representing, according to the artist, the Colville Reservation) while a crowd of white passengers gathers behind an anxious white conductor urging the pair to move along.

The cartoon, in and of itself, would clearly be offensive to most people today, but is nevertheless a historical document illustrating the sentiments of the time. The question, Hansen asked, is whether it’s appropriate to run in the newspaper.

Nearly everyone had misgivings right away, but generally agreed that it would be appropriate if the surrounding context made it abundantly clear that it was presented as an artifact. One suggestion was to run an image of not just the cartoon, but a large section of the newspaper page on which it ran, so that the era in which it was originally published is clear at a glance.

City editor David Wasson said that he often hears complaints from people about the historical photos that run in the IN Life section, some of which portray social or cultural attitudes that we might not be so proud of today. Wasson said that no matter how carefully the context is clarified, there will always be some who believe the newspaper is celebrating or promoting those attitudes.

After the discussion, Hansen opted to err on the side of caution and not run the cartoon.