Work. Life. Limericks.

The 2010 Daytona 500 was an interesting race, even if you’re not normally a NASCAR fan. From the debut of Danica Patrick to the constant start and stops on the field, even newspapers that don’t normally play sports big did a bigger-than-average review of the race.

Our challenge was to cover the Daytona 500 race using at least three ASF (or alternative story form) elements.

First, the page:

(Again, the conversion has totally blacked out the story about Danica Patrick and part of the Daytona 500 finishes graphic. These were originally on a 10 percent screen with black text and were perfectly readable).

Orlando Sentinel Page Design Nick Musada had these critiques:

Great photo edit. Great graphic in upper right. Great timeline. Nice choice of stories.  

Very well done. Headline does feel a bit small and squeezed into a small area, but you guys nailed everything else.

You’ll notice that our going too small on the headline will be a trend in the upcoming page design critiques. In this case, I have to agree with Nick. Not that the headline is necessarily too small, but that it doesn’t convey enough information. After several lackluster Daytona 500 finishes (and so many touch-and-go’s on the track that day), FINALLY! can certainly sum up Jamie McMurray’s feeling of the day. But wait a minute — Jamie who? That’s right. We didn’t give enough credit to the guy who actually won the Daytona 500. His name is in the photo caption and in the second sentence of the main article, but someone glancing at the page who didn’t really follow the sport would have no idea who won the race.

Even the graphic element that Nick complements — that is, the listing of NASCAR 500 past performances — is missing key information. WHOSE past performances? We don’t say and the reader has to assume. Bad form on our part.

-Heidi A. DeVries

On Thursday, I participated in an online chat hosted by the Poynter Institute that discussed whether the media should be covering Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s sexual orientation. You’ll have to scroll down for the chat but the article is well worth reading, as well.

The discussion was lively and interesting. It seemed that most journalists participating in the chat felt that the sexual orientation question was one that was not relevant but Poynter Institute moderators had a different take on things. For instance, this exchange between me and Poynter’s Kelly McBride:  

Me:

If she’s not a lesbian, that’s an awkward sentence. That’s like randomly introducing a sentence in an profile like, “And Kelly McBride is not a vegan.”

Kelly replied:

It’s true, I’m not a vegan. However, because I hang out with a lot of vegans, some people might think I am and assign to me a philosophy of a vegan. But I think it’s responsible if you are asking the question to explore the notion that this is not a simple question with a simple answer. Many people have a shifting understanding of their own sexual identity that ranges from straight to gay to other to asexual. And even within each of those answers are subcategories that challenge conventional wisdom. Straight or gay, for some people, is an unreasonable set of boundaries.

Another chat participant, Zerlina Maxwell, blogged about the subject about if the interest in Elena Kagan’s sexual orientation was perpetrated by sexism. Well I thought that the analysis was interesting (that the topic is brought up because she is unmarried, has short hair and is not what most people would consider especially attractive. As I pointed out in the Poynter chat, there were rumors that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist was gay because he was an attractive, unmarried man.

However, there’s also an interesting presupposition that her sexual orientation matters because she could end up reviewing cases that involve homosexuality. This to me seems like a false dilemma for two reasons.

First of all, it assumes that if you’re a member of a minority group, you should not be a participant in deciding how that minority group is covered or treated. There is no litmus test to find out if a Supreme Court judge is a homophobe or may rule on homosexual issues because he believes strongly in the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, so why would there need to be a censorship of someone who may feel a different way?

Second of all, even if Elena Kagan was a lesbian, that doesn’t mean that she will always rule in favor of what could be seen as homosexual issues.

One of the chat’s guests, lawyer and journalist Michael Triplett, put it this way:

Heidi, you are right about the way identity intersects with a judge’s views on the law. Being a lesbian doesn’t necessarily mean someone is always going to support gay rights. Clarence Thomas’s racial identity doesn’t necessarily translate to a strong civil rights record and even Justice O’Connor wasn’t a consistent advocate for women’s rights before the court.

Photo of Elena Kagan by Matthew W. Hutchins

-Heidi A. DeVries

What do you do when you’ve got a big story but you don’t have any color or even photos to use to illustrate it. This was a challenge given to me by Orlando Sentinel Page Designer Nick Masuda.

First, the page.

(Now, conversion from the InDesign format to a .jpg has messed with the page a little — particularly, the shaded spots were originally a 10 percent gray and not a dark maroon color.)

Nick’s page critique included:

Biggest critique I have here is the volume of the main hed. You did a great job of breaking things down, but the main hed is a way too small for a story that is taking up a half-page. Remember to push the boundaries and then scale back if needed.

In retrospect, I still agree with my headline choice, although I see Nick’s point. I would have used a different font for the body style (we could only use Myriad Pro and/or Rockwell and I think I should have switched the way I used the two. Rockwell works well large but really muddles up smaller print). I also would adjust the paragraph justification, leading and kerning to be more aesthetically pleasing but all in all, I’m still pleased with the amount and flow of information on this page.

I know this event hasn’t been in the news for a while, but hearing about a friend’s trip to SeaWorld reminded me of the ethics controversy immediately after Dawn Brancheau was killed at SeaWorld when killer whale Tilikum grabbed her by the hair and pulled her underneath the water. News agencies were fighting for the right to obtain the videotapes of the incident (and then, as an afterthought, deciding how and if they would even use the video in their coverage).

Family members and the aquatic park itself both asked for the security video that shows the incident to not be released to the public. Though the security video was the property of a private entity (SeaWorld) when it was filmed, the video entered the realm of the public record once local police confiscated the videotape during an official investigation of the death.

A temporary injunction was granted by Dawn Brancheau’s family to stop release of the video and the family members are seeking to permanently ban the video from being available to the general public. Kelly McBride, an ethics scholar at the Poynter Institute, wrote in a March 10^thpost to her Everyday Ethics blog that journalists should continue to fight to keep public records such as these open – mostly because if they don’t, it sets a dangerous precedent on how future public records could be prevented from getting to the public.

She wrote

“Sealing this video in order to uphold the family’s desire for privacy makes it more likely that future records will be sealed for reasons other than the public’s interest.”

What is on the video may or may  not be worthy of airing (although the high interest in the event – particularly because it happened in front of park spectators – does mean there is already a built-in audience for seeing what actually happened), there are plenty of circumstances the video could reveal that would make the video of Brancheau’s death a pathway into quality journalism.

For instance, there were rumors shortly after the death that there were safety protocols in place for dealing with Tilikum that Brancheau may have violated when interacting with the animal. This could help determine if there was a lack of adequate training at SeaWorld. Additionally, the video could be considered worthy of attention if that lack of training or irresponsibility on SeaWorld’s part was in part or wholly ignored or even covered-up by investigating law enforcement, as pointed out by McBride. Despite the likelihood that the video would be used in a sensational, irresponsible way if it’s released, the first tenent of journalism is to tell the truth and report it as fully as possible. This cannot be done unless journalists know what was on the videotape and if there’s any truth that should be reported.

What to do with the videotape?

Just because the public interest is high doesn’t mean that newsrooms should make the video available to the public if it does get released as a public record. As Poynter Online Group Leader Al Tompkins points out in his March 10 blog post in Al’s Morning Meeting, there are circumstances involving this case that make it tempting to put online but also questionably ethical. Since the video isn’t record from a public agency and no one has been accused of a crime, release of the video for reason other than displayed corruption or dangerous working conditions would be irresponsible.

What about the killer whales?

Very briefly, the ethics of keeping creatures such as Tilikum in captivity must come into play. While there have more than two dozen attacks on handlers, intruders and other humans by killer whales held in captivity since the 1970s, there are no recorded deaths of humans due to an attack by a killer whale in the wild. There is some evidence that stress (including small living spaces, forced social groupings that wouldn’t exist in the wild and chemically-altered water) may contribute to the aggressive nature of captive killer whales as opposed to killer whales in the wild. Life expectancy of captive killer whales are significantly shorter than those in the wild. Additionally, killer whales that are held in captivity show a number of pathologies that differentiate them from creatures in the wild, including collapsed dorsal fins.

According to Billy Hurley, chief animal officer at the Georgia Aquarium, in a Feb. 26, 2010 Associated Press article:

“Shows to go on at SeaWorld, King of Orca Business,” killer whales have no malice in their aggression. “In the case of a killer whale, if they want your attention or if they’re frustrated by something or if they’re confused by something, there’s only a few ways of handling that,” he said. “If you’re right near pool’s edge and they decide they want a closer interaction during this, certainly they can grab you.”

The video may fuel public debate on the matter.

Photo by Allie_Caulfield