If you ask one News reader, putting Jerry Sullivan’s column on the front page recently was a spectacularly bone-headed decision.

“We are on the brink of another Vietnam, we have suicides in the U. S. military increasing at an alarming rate. Our children are killing themselves. We cannot provide health care for our own people, and the disparity of values in this country is becoming more and more ‘us against them.’”

Against this background, George McNally of Amherst writes, it was absurd to give such prominence to a sports columnist’s take on the firing of Buffalo Bills coach Dick Jauron.

“How far we have fallen,” McNally said in a blistering letter to the editor.

Whose idiotic decision was this, anyway? I’ll avoid that question for a minute.

Let’s move now to the large photo of rocker Bruce Springsteen on the front page of Monday’s paper.

That choice became the subject of some spirited disagreement among commenters on the News Web site.

“This is front-page news?” demanded one reader. “In a big grown-up city, this story would be in the entertainment section.”

That brought a rejoinder from yet another less-than-satisfied customer: “It beats what the hell is usually on the front page of this fish wrap.” And from still another in a reference to multiple front-page stories on “Extreme Makeover” on Buffalo’s West Side: “Oh, yeah, right no Dolores Powell getting more free stuff stories last week. The Boss actually wrangled away the headlines from ‘The Entitled One’ Powell.”

Readers, it’s clear, care what goes on the front page of their paper.

Placing stories on the front page is often a consensual decision that arrives through discussion and give-and-take at a meeting the evening before the paper comes out.

Or, sometimes, I just decide.

That was the case with the Jerry Sullivan column.

Like it or not, the hapless Buffalo Bills are big news in this town and Jauron’s firing created excitement. I knew, though, that by the time the morning paper came out, just telling people the news about owner Ralph Wilson’s decision would not make the paper a must-read. Anyone who cared would already know.

What could we offer readers that would be ours alone?

The answer was apparent: Jerry Sullivan’s commentary.

Sullivan is always provocative and literate, and—while not famous for displaying the milk of human kindness—he is the definitive local voice on the subject of the Bills.

With no argument from other senior editors here, I took the plunge and put a piece of sports commentary across the top of the front page for the first time in my memory. Readers seemed to like it—the column quickly moved to the most popular stories on The News Web site and stayed there. Extra papers went into the field and sold briskly.

I respect McNally’s point of view. And most days, our front page is serious to the point of grimness—with enough war, government malfeasance and pestilence to satisfy anyone.

But, as a local newspaper, we pay special attention to what is on people’s minds in the Buffalo area. Few subjects captivate Buffalonians as much as their success-challenged football team.

The Springsteen concert, with overtones of “the last time” for his legendary band, was also causing plenty of buzz. We had a truly great photograph by staffer Robert Kirkham and a well-reported story by Brian Meyer. Inside, Jeff Miers’ review, written on a brutally tight deadline, captured the concert’s flavor perfectly, and the front-page treatment allowed us to direct readers to that review.

We wouldn’t do it every day. But, on those days, the choices seemed right.