The two began alternating weekly columns in October 1999.

“The goal of the column is to demystify the decisions journalists make,” Weaver said. “We have explained choices on picture use, the use of juveniles’ names in crime stories, our practices in covering suicides, and our decision to devote local resources in the pursuit of a national story.

Sometimes they write side-by-side columns debating a decision. The point/counterpoint columns are “easily the most popular ones that we do,” Weaver said. “Readers always comment that it’s interesting to learn there isn’t one viewpoint that the entire newsroom holds on how to do something.

In April 2000, Weaver decided to put the dramatic photo of a federal agent holding an automatic rifle and a frightened Elian Gonzalez inside the Herald-Tribune. Armao thought the photo should have appeared on Page One.

In side-by-side columns, Weaver explained her decision; Armao disagreed.

Weaver: “I’m the one who chose to run the picture of Elian, crying in an INS agent’s arms as he was rushed to a waiting van, as the dominant art. But I wanted the balance of showing the child later in the day with his father — a much different image of a happy child — so we ran that photograph at the top of the page, next to a headline reading ‘Reunited.’ We ran the photo of the automatic rifle-toting federal agent inside, on page 18A.

“I believed that picture absolutely had to be published in our newspaper; the question about whether the government had used appropriate force in retrieving the child centered on it. The issue to me was whether it should be the dominant 1A image.

“What swayed me to my final choice was the emotional content of the two pictures we ran juxtaposed on 1A. Both center on Elian’s face and the child’s reactions. It is his face that draws your eye in both of those photos, while in the gun picture, all you look at is the weapon itself.”9

Armao: “I see Janet’s point of view, but if I had been the senior editor in charge last Saturday night, your front page would have looked very different.

“The photo that free-lancer Alan Diaz took of a federal agent in riot gear armed with an assault rifle and grabbing at a young and terrified Elian Gonzalez is much more than a powerfully dramatic shot.

“It’s a classic photo, one of those iconic images like the kneeling student wailing at Kent State University, the naked girl with napalm burns running down a street in Vietnam, the Oklahoma City firefighter with an injured baby in his arms. It will forevermore symbolize and crystallize the Cuban-U.S. conflict that is the Elian saga.”10