Reders' ombudsman: Distance no problem when it comes to judging a news story

NEWS values are always worth a good argument. We have plenty of those arguments on a daily basis. Even in the industry, there is a kind of odd mystery which attaches to deciding news values, like it is akin to reading chicken bones or tarot cards. So when a reader complains about the positioning of certain stories I think it is always worth just talking through our thinking.

The letter begins on a suitably antagonistic note. "I always thought that it was a tradition in the newspaper industry to put the important news of the day on the front page," begins Nigel Willis. "Yet today we have 'Mandy's Green Monster', taking u...