News is news, good or bad

I occasionally have readers ask me why I put crime stories on the front page. This week will likely be no different after putting a story on the front page about a former Washington man charged with the rape of a minor.
While these types of stories are my least favorite to include on my front page (or anywhere in the paper), I feel like it is the job of a proper newspaper to include these stories in the newspaper as both a historic record and also as an awareness story for individuals who may have had contact with these accused individuals. And beyond that, any person who may have intentions of participating in such actions need to know local law enforcement will go after them, and the local newspaper will stick them on the front page.
If I chose to only print the good news in the community, it would be like we are censoring history and I’m not comfortable with that. And honestly, I feel like any newspaper that does not fulfill its commitment to report the local news, no matter how uncomfortable, isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
Don’t think for a minute, though, that it isn’t awkward to write these stories. The information-gathering phase of these kinds of stories can get downright explicit and trying to figure out what to include in the story and how to word it is easily the hardest part of my job. The “minutes per paragraph” stats on these sorts of stories would blow away any feature I’ve ever done. I literally comb through these stories word by word several times to make sure they are accurate, succinct and relevant.
These stories are not taken lightly by any means and they are absolutely not written to have a flashy headline to increase my rack sales.
So while I would agree with some of the nay-sayers that I would much rather read about good news in the community – local human interest stories, new business ventures, positive stories about our youth… anything like that – be assured that this newspaper will be an accurate historic record of everything that happens in this county.
We have not done a perfect job in this task at all times in the past, but as I start my eighth year in this career, it is my intent to let no news go by the wayside in Washington County.