When I was a young weekly newspaper editor, a man came into the office one summer morning to ask a favor. It didn’t take much detective work to infer he was a seasonal resident, probably wealthy — in New Hampshire, a “flatlander,” as he would have been, in Maine, “from away.”

He had been arrested a few days earlier on a drunken-driving charge, and wanted me to keep his name out of the police log. I told him that we checked, and then published, all District Court proceedings, and made no exceptions.

He seemed surprised, then annoyed, but it was clear I wasn’t budging. As he went out the door, his parting words were, “I bet you’re doing this just to sell newspapers.”

I wasn’t, but I also wasn’t surprised. Under the system of journalistic ethics that’s grown up in this country over the last 240 years, newspapers try to do what the legal system is sworn to do: Treat everyone equally under the law.

I didn’t tell my visitor he was lucky not to have been arrested in another nearby town, where the editor — believing that the offense wasn’t taken seriously enough — put all drunken-driving arrests on the front page. (I didn’t agree with that editor’s news judgment, but it’s likely the incidence of OUI arrests was lower in his town.)

The “selling newspapers” part did bother me, though. When a dramatic story, and even more so, a dramatic photo, is on the front page, it often pains or embarrasses part of the readership. Yes, the press does compete for big, dramatic stories — something as true today as it was in the days of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping in 1932.

When it’s a public official involved, the decision to publish is easier. But there are often hard choices to be made between the duty to inform the public, and the need to obey ethical standards. We’re all human, but we sometimes have different roles to play.

Back when newspapers were thriving, community-oriented businesses — and local and state governments were functioning reasonably well — decisions like mine about the alleged drunken driver wouldn’t have prompted much disagreement, at least among editors. In theory, even if it had been one of my friends or relatives, I would have made the same call, though I’m thankful I didn’t have to.

Today, a smaller corps of newspaper reporters and editors has to make the same kind of decisions with fewer recognized guidelines. Two recent news stories pointed out the problem for me.

One was the arrest, after a four-day manhunt, of John D. Williams, the man accused of murdering Cpl. Eugene Cole of the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office. Reporting the story marshalled the collective efforts of much of the Maine press corps and electronic media, but when it seemed to be over, there was yet another front-page story referring to the “controversy” regarding photos of the suspect during and following his arrest, including one photo released without authorization.

What could the controversy be? The evidence was thin — one letter to the editor, and the usual anonymous and semi-anonymous social media postings, which raised some objections. Curiously, it took a professor at John Jay College to state the obvious, that “Killing a police officer in the line of duty is a very emotional and stressful event for all brothers and sisters in blue. Treating his killer with ‘dignity and respect’ is not a realistic expectation.”

Letter writers may write, and columnists may opine, but this, in my judgment, was not front-page news.

Similarly, the coverage of the mayor of Waterville, Nick Isgro, and his notorious use of social media, was a legitimate story no newspaper worth its salt would pass up. Mayors, like governors and presidents, have unique roles that require them, in effect, to be ambassadors for their cities, states and countries. That so many failures have occurred in these offices recently simply underlines the need for newspapers to cover aberrant behavior when it crosses ethical boundaries.

There was a less obvious need for subsequent stories that seemed, in essence, to be focused almost entirely on screeds from anonymous websites and blogs — which, by their very nature, must be considered unreliable sources.

The social media age offers new temptations to “sell papers” and retail utterances by and about elected officials that would once have appeared, if anywhere, in the gossip columns. We must resist those temptations.

Whatever their challenges — and there are many — newspapers are still, in the classic phrase, the “first rough draft of history.” Integrity and judgment are just as important as ever.

Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, opinion writer and author for 33 years. His new book is “Rise, Decline and Renewal: The Democratic Party in Maine.” He lives in West Gardiner, and welcomes comment at: drooks@tds.net

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