Why does The Tribune print so much bad news? That is a question the staff gets asked quite a bit.

The short answer is that we don’t print good news or bad news. We simply print news.

Each day this newspaper — and hundreds of others like it across the country — print court news, arrests and other articles about crime almost every day.

Why? To inform the public so they can protect themselves, their property and know what is going on in their neighborhoods.

It is unfortunate that we have to cover articles about theft, domestic violence, assault, murders and other crimes that go on but we have a responsibility to do so. But we also try to balance that out by reporting the good news, too.

Our recent Profile edition is an example because it was nothing but positive stories about Lawrence County.

We don’t live in a perfect world. Regardless of individual beliefs about what causes these societal issues, the reality is the problems are not likely to go away anytime soon.

The newspaper is simply a reflection of what is going on in the community.

Our goal is to just report the news, leaving it up to individual readers to determine for themselves what is good or bad.