L’Express’ editor-in-chief Eric Mettout explains on his blog how and why his paper published the scoop on Le Figaro altering the minister’s photo. (French version at the link, excerpt translated by yours truly below. Molière reference impossible to translate.)

“It’s true it’s not North Kivu, this story. But it’s information, not as harmless as it looks, which says a lot about the collusion of media and [political] power — worse, on the conditioning of certain newspapers or journalists who now self-censor even before the Commander intervenes. It threatens us, too. The day when, God forbid, we slip up, to be called back to our senses this way will be painful but salutary.”

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Here’s one for the ethics textbooks that motivates me to revive this otherwise forgotten blog. Look at those two photos:

The top one is the Wednesday Nov 19 front page of Le Figaro, one of France’s top daily newspapers. The bottom one is the original photo taken by François Bouchon for Le Figaro. Notice the gorgeous ring on the finger of our justice minister, Rachida Dati? (by Chaumet, white gold and diamonds, price tag: 15,600 euros, or about $19,500 in today’s super high dollar.) Notice how it’s disappeared on the front page?

Worse than the act of altering a news image (huge no-no, if you were wondering), is the totally unapologetic stance of the Figaro photo editor when interviewed by L’Express, a competing newspaper, which revealed the photo was doctored.

“We went to press under a tight deadline. We’re taking responsibility [for this]. We didn’t want that ring to be the object of a polemic, when the real topic is the judges’ petition. Rachida Dati has nothing to do with this.”

[For context, Le Figaro is right-leaning, as is the government, and people could have assumed the minister requested the ring be removed from the photo. Also, Dati isn't very popular with France's law professionals and they recently let it be known. And generally, French people don't like to see a 20k piece of jewelry on their government officials in the middle of the worst crisis since the Great Depression.]

I’m appalled. If you don’t want the ring to be so apparent, choose one of the other gazillion photos on file of this highly mediatic, government official. (Believe me, I too care about the judges’ petition; half my family is in the legal professions.) Being on deadline might be an excuse for not taking the time to tone a photo; I really don’t see how it’s one for going the extra mile and altering a photo. And most of all, nothing —NOTHING— is an excuse for misleading readers.

I really don’t care what circumstances this was done under, because I can’t think of a single one that would make it ok. At this point, were I a Figaro reader, all I’d want is an apology. And I have yet to find one on Le Figaro’s Web site.

PS: Now the photo is all everyone’s talking about, and not the judges’ petition.

A fisherman's boat at Koh Tonsay, an island on the Gulf of Thailand across from Kep, Cambodia, where I was two weeks ago. (© me)

Among other things: a bit of blogging fatigue frankly, we all go through it. And not much Internet connection. But a lot of exciting developments are happening, which I will write about soon.

Phnom Penh readers, look for me at BarCamp Phnom Penh, Sept 20 at the Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Center.

As the daughter of a freelance writer, I early on understood that content is worth money and businesses who ask writers and photographers to work for free are hogs. Every time you give up content, you bring down the rates for thousands of freelancers whose livelihood depends on people understanding there’s a monetary value attached to writing and photography. Pick one cause you believe in, my mom once told me, and write for them for free; the rest of them can open their wallets or ask someone else. Then I started writing myself, and I got it even more. But I also jumped on the citizen-journalism bandwagon, which is pretty much the same thing. In fact, it’s the one thing that’s always bothered me about it: we’re asking people to give up material that, especially in breaking news situations, could be worth thousands to them, exploiting the fact that they may not be familiar with media and rights.

But what’s the difference between Schmap’s query and my putting the photo on Flickr, geotagged for everyone to see when they look up Montreal? Maybe it’s that I’m getting a service in exchange from Flickr: they host my photos. I could, I guess, get a service from Schmap if I was visiting any of the cities they cover. Maybe, I’d feel more comfortable if Schmap was an open-source, non-profit, good-doing kind of an enterprise, but it sounds too commercial for me to willingly get robbed of my picture. I have till Sunday to give an answer. What do you think?

In the meantime, my vacation snapshot — which frankly isn’t worth a blog post — will get “wide exposure” right here.

Photographer friends, do me a favor. Which of the two framings above works best? I know it’s not grand art, but I’m unsure without an editor.

I know it’s really Cambodia you were waiting for, but it’s monsoon season, and it seems my free time almost always coincides with torrential rains. I will get to it, I swear.

The evening sun reflects off a creek in the Arapaho National Wildlife Refuge.

This tree, seen from the train on the ride up to the top of Pike’s Peak, may not seem like much, but it’s one of the oldest trees in America. It is more than 2,000 years old and started growing at the time Romans were building the Colysseum.

Georgetown’s downtown area is reflected in the window of an antique shop. Georgetown is a nicely preserved old frontier town. That’s my dad in the window.

Lost somewhere in North-eastern Colorado…

The evening sun shines through clouds in a valley of Rocky Mountains National Park.

The conductor announces the arrival of the Georgetown Loop train at the Silver Plume, Colo. station, and reminds schoolchildren to keep their hands in.

I put my reporter cap back on yesterday. Around 11.15 a.m., an explosion razed an entire house in the East Campus neighborhood of Columbia, Mo. In the explosion and the fire that ensued, Carl Sneed, 87, died, and his wife, Merna, 84, was gravely injured. A firefighter was also injured.

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It was just 3 blocks away from my house, which actually shook from the blast. I honestly first thought it was my roommate once again slamming doors, but the sirens of fire trucks and ambulances told me otherwise. I rushed over there, though to his great credit, my roommate, photographer Kuba Wuls, got there even sooner and got some very telling pictures.

I called the Missourian and what ensued was an awesome example of teamwork on a local breaking news story. Our friendly neighborhood citizen journalism team, led by Clyde Bentley, practically a neighbor of the Sneeds, right away put together a Flickr gallery and got information from neighbors. One such neighbor submitted pictures that helped us identify the hero of the day, a firefighter who pulled Merna Sneed from the fire. We had a breaking news burst very quickly on the Web site and many updates throughout the day. The full story at the end of the day and the many sidebars painted a much more complete picture than the competing paper’s. We sent news alerts via text messages. We had reporters and editors working on site, in the newsroom and at the hospital. Convergence reporters brought back video, Kuba brought back wonderful pictures, and I was equipped with my own camera, too. (See below my first ever published picture. The slideshow above is a mix of published and unpublished ones.) See the whole coverage at www.columbiamissourian.com.

The most unusual thing that came out of that day’s coverage was an interesting twist on new media meets old media. Everyone in East Campus was asking questions all day. But East Campus is an odd neighborhood with a large student population and just as large a population of elderly people, who may not have the instinct (or even the Internet connection) to check the Web for more information. The Missourian’s Saturday edition being a weekly printed on Thursday nights, we had no way to get the news in print out to the people in time. (Note: We are also cursed with the Friday breaking news.) So we made one up. I use “we” loosely because I’m sure the credit goes to someone; I just wasn’t around when the idea came up so I couldn’t tell you who. Anyways, the Missourian had launched in partnership with the East Campus Neighborhood Association an email newsletter about the neighborhood. We revamped the idea for print. We designed a one-page, front-and-back newsletter with excerpts of our Web coverage, made 300 copies and 8 of us hit the streets, fixing the newsletter to doorknobs with rubber bands.

What really matters in this story is the tragedy of an old couple being stolen their right to a peaceful, quiet death. I’m usually wary about covering such tragedies because there is a fine line between serving the needs of your community and just plain preying on victims. I don’t mean to celebrate this day as an achievement in journalism, and I hope it’s not what this post sounds like. But in the end, I think we served our community right yesterday: when so many people were worried about what was going on and wanted to share who Mr. Sneed was, the Missourian delivered.

The work, of course, continued today. In no particular order and unfortunately not exhaustively, here are some of the people to be credited for these two days’ outstanding work: managing editor Reuben Stern, editor Katherine Reed, editor Clyde Bentley, assistant editor Katie Fretland, reporter Sean Sposito, reporter Matt Harris, news editor and Web site wizzard Jake Sherlock, photographer Kuba Wuls, photography director Rie Woodward, photo editing staff (don’t even know all your names, I’m so sorry), photographer Katie Barnes, editor Liz Heitzman, editor Jeanne Abbott, production chief Joy Mayer, convergence editor Mark Lewis, reporter Jonathon Braden, reporter Annie Harp, reporter Lauren Fredman, convergence editor Beth Androuais, convergence reporter Jenn Herseim, convergence editor Jennifer Leong, circulation yesmen Rob Weir and Bruce Moore, photographer Joshua A. Bickel, citizen journalist Jackie Kreigh … (Yes, we are a huge newsroom, and that helped.) Those are only the ones I personally saw work or whose credit I could find on the Web site. I know there are plenty more. I am both proud and humbled to be a part of this team.

I was told last night that I am one conversation with Rita Reed shy of induction into the photo department. Alright, Rita, let’s chat. Why shouldn’t I want to stick around for a photo master’s after all? Didn’t you hear? CoMo is the 11th smartest city in the U.S., and Lord knows I need to surround myself with smart people. You already knew we pride ourselves on having the highest per capita ratio of journalists, but now we also have published proof that we are smarter than the Silicon Valley.

Elinore Longobardi over at CJR has pointed out all the statistical pitfalls of this list, and I make it a habit not to poorly duplicate the good work of others, so I’ll just link. I have to disagree with one point she makes, though.

The business press likes lists. We don’t know why. But it does. List-making seems more a clerical than journalistic function, but that’s just us.

I know why! They grab the public’s attention on your cover better than a puppy hugging a baby (yes, the puppy’s doing the hugging). They usually consist of simply reformatting research done by someone else, giving you super high return of very little time investment. And, every town of significant size is bound to be in one at some point, setting off a flurry of local bloggers advertising your publication for free. Lists are great.

Funny Forbes should praise our smarts, when lack of intellectual simulation is the reason why I couldn’t see myself living much longer in Columbia. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of brilliant, talented people around these parts that put me to shame every day, with a high concentration in an area roughly delimited by College, Providence, Locust and Rollins. CoMo is a neat little town that is dear to my heart, but three years was time enough to walk through the one museum and realize I’ll never find a decent bakery. I don’t think 4.16 percent of residents having a Ph.D. makes a place “a haven for intellectual stimulation and scholarly achievement.”

But you all know what really pisses me off about this list is that somehow Lawrence, Kan., made the top 10 and we didn’t. We want recall.

It’s dizzying this morning. It takes the judges less than 2 seconds per photo, and there are thousands. We’re watching the feature photo category right now; some are hardly better than many family shots I have, others are outstanding. Less than 5 in so far. When they get to the final rounds of each category, the judges take more time to analyze shots. I wouldn’t want to be sitting here if I had entered; they’re brutal. All for the good of the art of course. Out. Out. Out. Out. Oh wait, go back. That one was in.

Check it out: 65th POYi judging. Sunday-Friday from 8 a.m. until quite late at night, until March 7. Tucker forum, Gannet Hall, Missouri School of Journalism.