A letter to the editor this morning reflected a debate we’ve had internally over a story that appeared in Sunday’s NewsWatch section.

Letter writer Steve Jacobs of Frontenac challenged an AP story that appeared on the NewsWatch cover: “Are damsels in distress the real kryptonite?” As Jacobs notes, the story looked at the love lives of Spider-Man, Superman and Batman and asked if they might be better off as loveless loners. His letter asserts that there was no news value in the piece, and that such silliness hurts the newspaper’s credibility.

His thoughts were expressed by some editors here, even before the article ran.

For some time, we’ve wanted to broaden the horizons of NewsWatch topics. We’ve done a pretty good job of analyzing politics and social issues. But we’ve wanted to expand that diet to include broader issues involving culture, sports, business, everyday activities.

The Spider-Man article was such an effort. The actual AP article ran considerably longer than the few inches we published. Recognizing that the original piece was pretty light, some staffers suggesting condensing it. An effort to express a question in a fun way, let readers think for a moment and move on.

As I said, we had other staffers saying before publication that the effort wouldn’t work. After publication, even more voiced that opinion.

And today, a reader weighed in as well.

Bottom line, the experiment may have cost a single story position (the article was so short it didn’t continue off the cover.) Some readers may have found it a waste of several minutes. But one reader thought it exacted a toll on our credibility as a news source as well.