You can find the e-Eagle from the Kansas.com home page each day by clicking on the link near the top left-hand rail.

I think it sends a very strong message that The Eagle publishes a section with faith news, and devotes the front of a section to it. Last week I was looking at several newspapers from larger cities, and they all gave faith news a single page (or three-fourths of a page) inside an entertainment section, or on the back page of the section. One reader wanted us to remove entertainment news from the back of the Faith section, feeling that it devalued the religion stories.

I don’t see it that way. Entertainment is an important topic for thousands of our readers on the weekend, and that content is important to help people plan their free time. We chose to make faith stories a higher priority and give them a more prominent position. I think that speaks volumes about our priorities.

The section is behind the automotive advertising for a key reason - advertisers pay most of the newspaper’s costs for gathering and printing news, including for a prominent position such as the automotive section. Without those advertisers, we wouldn’t be able to offer the range of content we do on Saturday: news, sports, home and garden features, religion, and entertainment.

We have to find a balance of meeting the needs of readers and advertisers both. In addition, automotive advertising is very popular with readers, especially on Saturday. Faith & Values is right behind that section, so it shouldn’t be very hard to locate. Nor should our priorities for topics we consider important to cover.

Sometimes, a Democrat is just a Democrat. The reference to the governor’s party wasn’t meant as an implication of anything other than identifying her political party. One thing to keep in mind as Sebelius’ name floats as a potential vice president candidate - stories about her are being read online across the country as people seek to learn more about her. Such seemingly minor details help readers less familiar with Kansas politics. So the party affiliation - while extraneous to some - can aid clarity for thousands of other readers.

The decrease in calls from angry readers is open to interpretation, but one probable explanation is that a dominant majority of our readers access stocks information on the Web, from Kansas.com or one of dozens of other sites that offer up-to-the-minute quotes.

I do understand why those 200 readers are angry. A reader named Melinda left me a voice mail asking me to share the numbers of complaints and subscription cancellations we’ve had. She’s furious that we dropped the listings, and hopes other stock-users have joined her in protest. I’ve had the same feeling toward companies I’m angry at - and I’ve hoped that thousands of people joined me in protesting a decision I didn’t like about rates, service or products.

In this case, though, we’ve had one subscription cancellation. A caveat: Unless a reader specifies that he/she is canceling because of stock listings, I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint a cancellation to the stocks decision. However, so far, we’ve seen no spike in general cancellations.

None of that means we don’t care that we’ve upset readers. We do. I recognize that some of our readers don’t have computers, or don’t want to be tied to them for news. Because we serve tens of thousands of readers each day, we have to focus our available space on features that are of use and interest to the widest range of readers. I know that explanation doesn’t hold much water when you’re angry or your routine has been upended - and I’ve been on the other side of unpopular decisions as a consumer. Our hope is that readers find much more value than stock listings to bring them back to the printed paper each morning.

I am disappointed that the Eagle relegated the hostage release article to the back page, and am curious as to why. Does the Eagle think Kansans don’t care what happens on the national/international front?

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“Douglas, thanks for your note. I would be glad to talk about our philosophy of local vs. national/international news, and the factors that drove this story decision.

I have a very different perspective from what you describe in your email. Today, we ran full-length versions of six national or international news stories. We ran “briefs” of six others. We chose those six stories – from a menu of hundreds of national/international stories moved by our wire services yesterday – because we believed they were the most relevant and/or interesting news of the day from outside our region. We devoted more space to the Colombian hostage story than any other non-local article in today’s A-section. In my view, any story that rises to the top 1% or 2% of news stories available for the day isn’t being dismissed in its news value.

In addition, because readers often like to flip the newspaper over before turning inside, the back page of the A-section (whether it’s page 8, 12, 24 or whatever) is generally one of the most popularly read pages of the paper, after the front page. That’s where the hostage story  was published.

Newspapers across the country, regardless of size, varied widely in where they played the hostage story. Some, such as the L.A. Times and Kansas City Star, ran the story on the front page. Others, such as the Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Baltimore Sun, did not. Fewer mid-size newspapers, such as the Eagle, put the story on the front page. (You can  find front pages each day on the Newseum’s site.)

We define our primary mission as highlighting local news that our readers can’t get anywhere else. While you may dismiss the parks story as “soft,” I would urge you to drive out to one of the local lakes this weekend. There you will find thousands of people who create small cities with the mass of population camping at the waterways during the summer holidays. That will explain to you why, as of lunch hour, the parks story is the sixth most-read story on our Web site.

When I plug the Colombian hostages into Google, the top sites – of dozens that have this story today – are msnbc.com, yahoo.com, nytimes.com, npr.com, cnn.com, time.com, foxnews.com. The story is available everywhere. The story describing camping conditions at the major state parks is not.

While I’m sorry you’re disappointed in the positioning of the hostage story, I’m confident that the best service the Eagle can provide for the local community we serve is to focus our finite resources – reporting power and news space – on stories our readers can’t find anywhere else.”

Some people outside the news business are surprised when “traditional journalists” readily accept that some bloggers qualify as journalists. That seems obvious to me. Regardless of how someone distributes information, if they’re collecting and accurately reporting facts to the public, they’re serving a news-gathering function. Today, thanks to the Web, they no longer need a printing press to do so.

The definition of a journalist is increasingly important in an era when some members of the criminal justice system are intent on using subpoenas to coerce journalists into doing their jobs for them. Many bloggers lack the resources to fight subpoenas for notes and sources. Actually, many traditional media outlets lack those resources anymore. Extending First Amendment protections is an important battlefront on the horizon to stop the continuing spread of a dangerous practice that threatens to undermine the independence of news media - whether that’s a fully staffed newspaper or a single blogger working from her home.

We’re looking at options for doing that. The process of uploading the PDFs is automated and is based on a program that knows that those pages have the same page number every day. That might be a hitch with the Business page, since it runs inside the Local & State section, which can vary in size. We’ll try to make it work. Stay tuned.

I understand their point and yours about subjecting yourself to abuse by rude posters. On the other hand, when you post publicly, everyone gets the benefit of reading all of your comments. I suppose it’s a plus that more people use their real name when they email or call, and they probably wouldn’t in a posted comment. So in that regard, it’s a more personal connection for me to get direct contact vs. a post.

But posted comments allow for a multi-directional conversation. If you do post, and you feel like someone attacks you personally, flag that post and we’ll review it.