I was struck by a comment posted at the bottom of the online version of Saturday’s story about the death of Kevin Foley, the Portland man found shot to death in Westbrook’s Woodlawn Cemetery.

The comment was from a someone identified as Loren Coleman of Portland. Coleman wrote:

“As often happens regarding media reports about mysterious deaths – where ‘death sells’ newspapers – the story becomes all about the details of the murder, suicide, or accident. The person, the victim, can get lost in the story.”

Coleman then goes on to talk about Foley’s involvement with youth sports at Portland High School.

This resonated with me because I think Coleman was right about the victim getting lost in the story. We didn’t have a complete picture of Foley on Friday. The cops didn’t know much – or weren’t saying – and his family wasn’t talking. Since we didn’t have anything substantive about Foley in our archives, we didn’t have much to go on for that first story.

Coleman’s comment, however, and the comments posted by several other people when the story appeared, changed that. They gave us detail about who Foley was, and told us about his interests in local sports and antiques. Even better, the readers posted their comments under their names.

These “leads” proved pivotal for our public safety reporter, David Hench. Because he had names, he was able to call Foley's friends and get comments for his story in today's paper, which gave readers a much richer portrait of the man behind the crime statistic.

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