I wanted to take a minute to explain our coverage of the recent troubles with the law facing some University of Maine athletes and one former coach.

I've heard many opinions on each situation from the eye-rolling "Give us a break, this is news?" camp to the "Fire everyone at Maine!" camp.

To backtrack quickly:

Two weeks ago a football assistant coach was arrested for an OUI and resigned three days later.

Two days after that a fullback on the football team was issued a summons for assault for allegedly punching another man after a fight over the player’s girlfriend.

Days later a freshman walk-on receiver was issued a summons for stealing a debit card and charged with misuse of identification and receiving stolen property. A player on the basketball team who allegedly got a Yankees hat out of the spending spree was also charged with receiving stolen property.

Yesterday an 18-year-old sophomore wide receiver was issued a summons for possession of alcohol by a minor. The alleged party took place at the home of a women’s soccer captain who was issued with a summons for furnishing a place for minors to consume alcohol.

Taken individually none of these events was extremely newsworthy.

None of them, short of the OUI charge involving a staff member of the athletic department, amounted to, in our judgment, a significant story.

We reported on all of them – because we believe that is responsible journalism.

Responsible journalism, in my book, is being loyal to our readers, giving them information – good or bad – we think they need to know.

But we did not place any of these incidents on the front page of the newspaper, or the front page of sports, or even in lengthy stories.

We reported them in a few paragraphs, and ran them on the inside of the sports section to reflect their news value.

In other words, we believe our readers need to know this information, but that it doesn’t need to be sensationalized and splashed out on the front of the paper.

Conversely once these situations began to pile up, the news value also rose – which is why we addressed the perception the “trend” seemed to be creating among Maine followers. We ran a notebook column statewide in our Sunday Telegram.

We will continue to do follow-up reporting on all of these situations, to probe and make sure we’re not missing anything.

Should any of these situations escalate – a charge could be upgraded, another side could come out – we will re-evaluate our coverage.

We’ve had numerous conversations on how to handle each and every one of these incidents. At the end of the day our No. 1 priority is to report, accurately and fairly, to our readers what we believe they need to know.

“Fairly” is an important part of that sentence. As a news organization we have the privilege and ability to be a kind of “watchdog” for the common citizen of Maine.

But that doesn’t mean any tidbit that might seem juicy, is of true news value.

We need to be fair to the people we report on. That’s where our news judgment comes in.

For example, when the women’s softball team was suspended for hazing this summer the story took on more news value because it involved an entire group of players.

It was also alleged that the University had knowledge of a similar party earlier in the year and didn’t seem to do anything about it. The possible poor handling of a situation can escalate news value in a hurry.

Each of these current situations were handled fairly swiftly by UMaine.

Making these kinds of decisions can be a very gray area. One newspaper may see a situation different than another.

Even within a news department one reporter may see things differently than another. As readers some of you will agree with our way, some of you won’t.

For example Gabe of Augusta left a comment on our website at 1:53 p.m. today:
“Wow. If this was printed as news in any other area of the country, the newspaper would be laughed out of business.”

Then we have SM of Gray, who wrote:
“Sounds like UMO needs to do some housecleaning of its staff and reminders about following the law.”

I hope the majority of you can see why we report on these things, but don’t sensationalize them.

We work hard to do the right thing for our readers. We believe in our way.

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