An unusual package of stories in last Sunday's paper posed a troublesome issue for News & Observer newsfolk: Should a newspaper put individuals' private problems in a public spotlight toward the greater cause of addressing an important societal ill?

The issue is the problem of young minority males going to prison in greatly disproportionate numbers. The N&O's report focused on three teenagers, two black, one Latino, who fit the mold of kids who end up in prison: in trouble at school, at home, with the law. The paper told their stories as examples of the problems that a local organization, the Triangle Lost Generation Task Force, is trying to address. The youngsters' lives were splashed across the front page and a full page inside the paper.

What was unusual about the report was the focus on these three young men as exemplars of a type -- future prison inmates. The report made clear that the three "aren't necessarily headed for prison," but it nevertheless thrust them into the public eye in a way that most of us would not consider favorable. Profiles of each told of their problems with poor grades, expulsions from school and brushes with the law. The project was unusual for focusing on living souls instead of the institutions and policies that are the usual journalism fare when examining big societal problems.

All that was deliberate, says Holly Stepp, The N&O's Wake County editor, who edited the stories. The project began in July as a standard reporting effort that focused on the task force and the prison-population problem. That story didn't have much life to it, Stepp said, so she and reporters Thomasi McDonald and Samiha Khanna and shifted the focus, dramatically, to those most affected by the issue. "How could we write a story that is more compelling, not just about the adults but the beneficiaries, if you will, of what the adults are talking about? Let's talk about the kids -- who do they look like? What is their life experience?"

So the reporters set about finding African-American and Latino teenage males who fit the profile that the task force was worried about -- poor behavior in school, legal problems, lack of parental supervision. That's not an easy population to plumb, you might imagine, and the team talked to a number of young men and parents before finding three who agreed to have their stories told.

Aware of the pitfalls of spotlighting individuals, Stepp said, the paper tried to make clear to the youths and their parents that the stories would be about problem youths on a possible path to prison. "We were frank and upfront, and that's why we had some trouble finding these kids," she said. "We tried our very best to be very clear about what we were doing." Several initially agreed to be interviewed, then dropped out when they fully considered the possible negative implications.

Indeed, the picture that emerged in The N&O was bleak. The Rev. David Forbes, chair of the task force, described the problem of minority youth prison rates as "tantamount to genocide." The boys and their families were depicted in unblinking terms. "If you can't get a job, there ain't nothing but two things: rob and sell drugs," one youth is quoted as saying. The mom of another says, "The way he flips out and his attitude, I'm afraid someone will kill him before he goes to prison." (The individuals were identified by name, which added credibility to the reporting, but I don't think it's necessary to reproduce that here.)

Imagine reading that about yourself or your children. The paper got a lot of reaction to the stories, including some from the young people profiled.

This was a daring, even risky project for The N&O, involving a balancing act between possible damage to the young people portrayed so starkly and the public benefit of raising consciousness about a huge but little-discussed societal problem. Yes, the kids and their mothers gave "informed consent," but do people unaccustomed to dealing with the media really appreciate what they're consenting to? Especially youngsters? One of the young men complained afterward to McDonald, "Hey man, my girlfriend says you made me look like a thug."

Weigh that against the broader community awareness raised. The paper received a lot of e-mails and calls in response, mostly appreciative, some negative. The positive messages from teachers, parents and others asked how they could help the task force address the problem. The negative were -- let's call it what it is -- racist: "Blacks in general do most of the crime and yet thay (sic) are a minority. Blacks are more violet (sic) and always carry a chip on their shoulder." The saddest message I saw was from a father asking for help with his wayward (white) son. "I know if he continues on the path he is on, he is looking at menial jobs the rest of his life, or prison."

The project wasn't complete. In focusing on the young men, it gave only perfunctory attention to causes of and solutions to the problem of too many young minority males going to prison. (Black and Latino men make up 13 percent of North Carolina's population but nearly 64 percent of prisoners in the state.) That's the "institutional" story that the team chose not to do and, as Stepp acknowledges, there is serious reporting still to be done. "The part of the story yet to be written is the solutions," she said. "The N&O will have failed if we don't come back and follow this in a real solutions kind of way."

As for this work, it's a close call as to whether real human beings were exploited for the purposes of an important story. Given the conscientious attempt to fully inform the participants, and given the broader ripples that the stories generated in the public mind, I'll side with The N&O on this one and say the risk to individuals was worth the potential benefit to society -- and, maybe, to these teenagers. As Stepp says, "I really hope for each of these young men that something will happen in their lives that they don't end up being statistics."

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