The reader was laughing on the phone, but it was clear she was laughing at me, not with me.

"I don't think you care a thing about breaking news," she said. "I really love Michelle Wie. She's a great kid. But she does not belong on the front page of the news, the news, the breaking-news paper. Hezbollah is news. The war in the Mideast is news. The fires in California are news. It was a bad decision on your part."

The woman didn't leave her name. Nor did she reference a particular story. She didn't have to. She was talking about the Saturday, July 15, paper in which Michelle Wie, having just withdrawn from the PGA Tour's John Deere Classic after suffering from heat exhaustion, was taken by ambulance to the hospital. The smaller photo at the bottom showed Wie holding her stomach and the larger picture showed her on the gurney with an IV tube at her side.

"The world is on the brink of a nuclear war, the government runs a record budget deficit and yet your front-page article is about a 16-year-old girl who becomes exhausted from walking on a golf course," a letter writer remarked on Tuesday's letters page.

At our daily news meeting, in which top editors select the Page One stories, our news editor picked the Wie photos without hesitation. I agreed and said nothing but wondered if anyone was going to speak up against it. Nobody did. There was some talk about putting just the photos on the front page and placing the story in sports, but in the end, we figured the photos and story should stay together.

As news subjects go, we probably talk about Michelle Wie more than any other local public figure. It's a no-brainer that she's going to get covered. She's easily the most talented golfer in history for her age. She's attractive. She's one of the most recognizable athletes in the world. And she's from here. But that doesn't mean we don't worry about whether we are covering her to excess.

Local newspapers covering famous hometown athletes have a unique challenge.

On the one hand, it's easy to overdose on Michelle Wie. There's barely a day that goes by when someone is not writing about her. When she's in a women's tournament, we've got to plan on what to do if she wins. When she's in a men's tournament, we have to weigh the possibility that she will one day make history by making the cut. That means keeping an eye on her rounds at all times.

On the other hand, Michelle Wie doesn't just belong to Hawai'i. She's belongs to every fan and media outlet out there, and The Honolulu Advertiser has no special access to her. We fight for our stories with Sports Illustrated, USA Today, ESPN and everyone else. It's no surprise that those closest to Wie gain much more exposure by going to a newspaper or magazine with larger circulation or a network with a wider audience to tell her story.

As the graphic illustrates, we are not shy about putting Michelle on the front page. She was at the top of the left-hand column, called "the rail," during the U.S. Women's Open July 1, 2 and 3, and back out there again during the HSBC Women's World Match Play Championship on July 7, 8 and 9. We could be accused of laziness in not finding other images, but the fact is, when Michelle Wie is playing, there is intense interest in how she is doing.

I can't tell you how many extra papers we sell because of Michelle Wie, but I can tell you that she is almost always at the top of our hits at honoluluadver tiser.com, our Web site. When she's in a tournament, we provide an online hole-by-hole update, especially for people who cannot watch her on television. Readers expect to find deep coverage of Wie in print and online when they turn to The Advertiser.

We have sent Ann Miller, our superb golf writer who has been covering Wie since Michelle was 10, to five Wie tournaments in the past three years. Next year, we're sending her to two more. So we are continuing to invest in our coverage of this remarkable athlete.

Arguing, as the woman on the phone did or the letter writer has, that there's more important news in the world than Michelle Wie is not really the point. There will always be something more newsworthy somewhere in the world than what is happening locally. When we select stories for the front page, we're looking to give the reader something local (you can get national and international stories from countless sources elsewhere) and we hope, something in the morning that you didn't know when you went to bed the night before. The fact that Michelle Wie's tournament that ended with a hospital visit was not on TV played a part in our decision to place it on Page One.

Like it or not, Michelle Wie is big news in Hawai'i and will continue to be for some time. Some years ago, when basketball star Michael Jordan decided to play for the Washington Wizards, The Washington Post assigned a reporter to cover Jordan full time. Not the Wizards, but Michael Jordan.

We won't go that far. But Michelle Wie is important to Hawai'i and important to The Advertiser. To us, she is a local story, and her victories and heartbreaks will be analyzed for years to come. Most often, you'll read about her in the Sports section. But when it's out of the ordinary, she'll land on Page One with the rest of the news.