Composition instructors need to emphasize to their students that persuasion is not always announced--it can be forcefully present in so-called "objective" forms of discourse like textbooks and news. News photographs can be successfully used in the composition classroom as a unit of study in visual rhetoric to introduce students to the direct relationship existing between visual representations and written texts. The unit proposed is relatively short, 2 to 3 weeks of class time. It includes the choosing and discussion of a general topic or issue for analysis, the collection of data (news photographs and accompanying articles), the introduction of several analytical techniques (such as the face-ism index, agent/patient analysis, and creating narratives) that can be used to argue for a particular "reading" of one or more photographs, and the writing of a brief analytical essay focusing on a single photo or a series of photos. The purpose of this unit goes beyond introducing students to the study of new photography, however. The culminating essay also reinforces the notion that analysis and interpretation depend on more than the mere presentation of evidence: writers must also provide carefully reasoned discussions that explain how their evidence supports their interpretation. (KEH)