Dear Coach,

Some readers in our conservative community don’t like it when we publish certain stories, particularly about race and sexual orientation. Is there a danger in feeding your readers stories many don’t want to see? How do you weigh that against keeping people in your community informed? –Too Much News

Dear Too Much,

If a story about race or sexual orientation is newsworthy, then report it fairly and accurately. There will always be readers who don’t want to hear it, no matter what the story. But it’s not your job to worry about that. Your job is to cover the whole community – fairly. A good news organization can help in that task by providing a balanced story mix, open forums for comment and columns that help people understand how and why reporters and editors make the choices they do.

In the end, there are two basic categories of news: What people need to know, and what they want to know. I’d say the danger is in “feeding” readers — conservative, liberal or somewhere in between – only what they want. As Carl Rowan said, there are times when “hard truths” need to be told, even when people don’t want to hear them.

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