People are talking about a 21-year-old woman who abandoned her newborn baby at Saint Elizabeth Regional Medical Center.

Several are outraged — about the front-page story and photo of the woman that ran in the Journal Star.

What were we thinking?

Diane Schroeder of Ulysses called to say we were cruel.

The story needed to be told, she said, but we didn’t need to include the woman’s name and address, nor did we need to put her high school yearbook photo on the front page. She found the tone of the story to be righteous and mean-spirited.

“I just think it was wrong to expose this little girl. She tried hard to provide a safe place for that baby,” Schroeder said.

Schroeder saw other examples of parental neglect when she worked on an obstetrics ward years ago.

“I dare you to start writing articles about the number of men who have abandoned their babies,” she said.

I appreciate hearing from Diane Schroeder and other readers. Their heartfelt comments spur me to explain what we were thinking when we did this story.

We think it’s news when a woman abandons her newborn baby at a hospital.

Our first report said police were looking for the mother. Then we began to explore other angles: How often do pregnant women check into hospitals under fake names? Would things be different if senators had passed a “safe haven” law that has been proposed?

Police found and cited the woman on suspicion of misdemeanor child neglect and abandonment. We reported that on JournalStar.com.

The hospital held a press conference featuring another mother, one who was happy to take her newborn home.

The Journal Star reporter and his editors discussed whether to include the other mother in the story. It could have gone either way. They decided on a storytelling approach, rather than a straight-news approach, because the ticketing would be “old news” to many readers.

It’s routine for the Journal Star to include addresses when writing about people ticketed for crimes. It helps cut confusion about other people with the same or similar names. It’s also common for us to publish photos of people suspected of crimes. Perhaps in this sensitive case we should have talked more about these elements.

Overall, though, the journalists who worked on this story were trying to do the right thing. They were giving the community accurate information about an important matter — the abandonment of a newborn baby. They did their best to report this story ethically and to be humane while telling a hard story.

That said, I appreciate those readers who have written or called me about this story. I appreciate those who have written letters to the editor, some of which we’re publishing today. It helps us make better judgments about news coverage when we know what readers think.

Kathleen Rutledge is the editor of the Lincoln Journal Star. Call her at (402) 473-7334 or e-mail her at krutledge@journalstar.com.