News-Record.com

To illustrate the story, we had several beautiful, touching photos of a young boy cradling his infant brother. Just from looking at them, you would have thought that the baby boy, wrapped in a blanket, was sleeping. In fact, he was dead. That knowledge made the photos and story heart-breaking.

The parents of the child did not consider publishing the pictures an intrusion. Instead, the mother said she is proud of her son and wants to share the photos so that "it might help other parents deal with their grief."

Yet, we feared that would be unfair to you if we published the photos as the centerpiece of the features section. Looking at the photos first, you would have seen two loving children. Not until you read the story would you have realized that the baby was stillborn.

We ended up publishing the story about the service on the front page of the section, with a small photo of the child alone on an inside page so that people wouldn't accidentally stumble upon it.

Still, some readers thought that publishing a photo was manipulative and would bring back awful memories of other parents who had lost children.

"I am still haunted by this story that I read yesterday, and I made sure that I threw the paper out," wrote one person on my blog. "I did not want my pregnant, emotional wife having to deal either with this story or with the gut-wrenching picture. I found it unbelievably morbid, and I wish I had never seen it."

We considered that response, and I sympathize with it, but we felt we needed to show people that photos could be taken that were not only tasteful but loving.

The second story involved the sad case of the Grimsley High School student caught stealing weapons from an Army Navy store who told investigators that he had discussed with a friend possibly harming classmates.

There wasn't any discussion of whether this story was newsworthy. Given the spate of school violence across the nation -- Grimsley itself was locked down last Spring because of reports of a gunman on campus -- that question was answered before it was even asked.

Managing Editor Ann Morris recounts the discussion in the newsroom about where to publish the story: "Should it be the lead story, at the top of the page, with the biggest headline, or was that overplaying the story?"

We were concerned about the proportionality of the student's threat. While he had been arrested in a breaking and entering case, he faced no charges relating to possible school violence. Without his comments to investigators, a simple B&E charge would have merited a few sentences inside the paper, at best.

Ann described the in-house discussion this way: "Those who advocated leading with it made these points: Students had admitted to police that they had discussed hurting classmates. Police had found a rifle and pipe bomb materials in one of the student's homes. With everything we know about Columbine and other school massacres, this is serious, scary stuff. Don't we have an obligation to the community to report this news prominently? If your child attended Grimsley, wouldn't you want to know? And, if nothing else, it would be widely read.

"Those who advocated downplaying the story argued that... at this point no charges have been brought and no arrests have been made. These are teenagers, ages 16 and 15. Teenagers are known to talk about all sorts of things, including stupid, irresponsible things. But, again, no charges have been brought. Is it really fair to them to scream this story from the top of the front page?"

It's difficult enough for adults to live down front-page stories of misbehavior. It's doubly hard for a troubled teenager. Where does the newspaper draw the line between informing the community and letting a young person have a second chance.

We know full well also that there are long-lasting repercussions from what and where we publish, and we think about it every day. This story ended up lower on the front page with a smaller headline, even though we knew it would probably be the most read story in the paper.