Our story two weeks ago that Dayna Ho Henry, daughter of the late Don Ho, had died of an accidental methamphetamine overdose brought some protest from readers and a family friend who thought the headline — "Ho daughter OD'd on meth" — was grossly insensitive to the Ho family.

One reader wondered why we ran the story at all.

"I am curious about your motives for publishing this story," he wrote. "Dayna was not a famous person. How did you hope to aid society, to better Hawai'i, by publishing this story? We all already know that drugs are harmful and dangerous. There is no cautionary tale of hero worship here. There is no tragedy of celebrity status corrupting a person's soul. There is nothing to learn from your story — no moral — other than gossip about a relative of a recently deceased famous person."

Not running the story at all would be out of the question. The tragedy of Dayna Ho Henry's death, following so close after her father's, is news pure and simple. Following up on the cause of death is routine and is worth reporting.

Certainly we search for greater meaning in all the stories we write or pull from our news services. But tragic stories appear in the newspaper all the time, sometimes for no other reason than they are tragic, not because there is a bigger moral issue or the potential to better society. Last week we ran a story out of Boston about a 7-year-old boy shooting his 8-year-old cousin with an illegal, unregistered handgun at home. Other than the heartbreaking nature of the story, there was no larger meaning other than the fact that guns in the wrong hands can kill innocent people.

In the Ho Henry case, one reader and the family friend pointed out how unfortunate it was going to be for her daughters (one of whom is starting seventh grade) to read about their mother's death or have friends offer their condolences after reading The Advertiser story. It is indeed sad that these girls are growing up without their mother and of course we are sympathetic, but to blame us for how they might hear about the news is a little misplaced. Whether the news appeared in our newspaper (or in another newspaper) or on television or by word of mouth, it eventually was going to be made public because it was newsworthy.

It is quite conceivable, by the way, that had we not written a story, another set of readers might have wondered if we were protecting the family in light of the extensive coverage we gave Don Ho's death.

Here's what went into our thinking: When one of our reporters received the news from the Honolulu medical examiner's office, it was brought to the editors. We had to decide what questions needed to be asked and answered and to get the Ho family's reaction. The family has been extremely gracious and cooperative with us, especially Dwight Ho, Dayna's brother and the family's spokesman. In the story about the overdose, he spoke with entertainment writer Wayne Harada and offered an intimate portrait of his sister and described her gift of helping people, including her father, mother and grandmother.

I thought the story was written fairly and sensitively. We determined the story should not run on Page One but somewhere on the front of the Hawai'i section. It played in the lead position on B1 but could have appeared somewhere else on the page. Harada thought it should have run on the bottom of the Hawai'i page and he was surprised by the headline.

"Besides (the insensitive) headline, I thought the story was vastly overplayed," he said. "After all, this was the daughter of an entertainer, and while it was an untimely death, right after his, she was not a well-known community figure."

I can see how the headline might have struck some — especially the family — as insensitive, but it was accurate. Had it said, "Ho autopsy: accidental meth death," I'm not sure that anyone angered by the story would have been any more pleased with the way it came out.

We make decisions on dozens of stories each day and those that are most sensitive, such as this one, deserve special discussion. The headline perhaps could have been rewritten, but the story was accurate and fair.