A subscription cancellation last week came with this comment: "I have been a subscriber since 1974 but feel that your paper has shifted the important news off the front to other pages, like Page 10, where the national news items, important to me, are resulting in less coverage every month. The front page of your newspaper has become almost as newsworthy as a grocery tabloid."

That comment was more vinegary than most I receive, but it did reflect the typical complaints: too much local news on the front, excessive attention to "soft" news and crime stories. An example last week was the Wednesday paper, which devoted much of the front page to a feature, with three pictures, about the U.S. Kids Golf Championships in Pinehurst.

That page brought a protest from Lany McDonald of Raleigh, who said she understands the need to soften up sober news pages with light features. "But when a 'brite' with cute photos takes up over half the front page, that day's paper has lost focus on the real news," she said.

McDonald reads her newspaper with a more discerning eye than most. Now semiretired in Raleigh, she is former research director for Time Inc. in New York and, before that, for The N&O. She worries about what she sees as a trend among newspapers toward pages designed more to attracting readers than to telling the news of the day.

"It's important to me that I see that in a newspaper I read -- that it recognizes what news is and sees to it that I am informed," McDonald said.

Melanie Sill, The N&O's executive editor, says informing readers remains the driving purpose of The N&O and that its front-page philosophy hasn't changed: "Our philosophy has always been to give people state, local and regional news, and the presence of national and international news kinds of ebbs and flows" with events.

She said the front-page news mix has shifted in the past 10 years from mostly national-world news to mostly local, state and regional. That reflects a changing information environment where people access more national and world news from other media, especially the Internet, she said.

Sill said the paper isn't trying to target younger readers or any particular audience with its story selection. The goal, she said, is to give them value with stories that inform, explain and relate to their lives.

As for soft news, Sill says the paper always has looked for interesting stories that give readers a break from the heavy news of the day. She showed me a 1962 N&O front page that gave second billing to the breakup of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh (The lead story: Conflict between Syria and Israel). The key, she said, is that a front-page story be interesting and tell people something they didn't know before. The kid golf story did that, she said.

"This is a well-done story with good photos," she said. "I don't have any apologies for showcasing that. One thing I learned a long time ago is you're never going to get consensus on what an ideal front-page mix is."

The kid golf story was a "centerpiece," which is a design device that spotlights one story on the front page with eye-catching art, headlines and typography. It gives visual impact to the page, which invites readers into the paper.

But I think the centerpiece also contributes to readers' perceptions of misplaced news priorities. The kid golf package overshadowed two stories on the Mideast fighting -- immeasurably more important information.

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