It was supposed to be an easy story. In the national news, stories of priest pedophile cases were discussed and debated, so at the Daily we were wondering what was happening at the local level.

Were Roman Catholics in Ames worried about this issue? How were they reacting in their local parishes? What were local priests doing to address the issue?

The Daily has done stories like this about other national issues countless times before.

I mentioned it to one of our news editors last week and they put it on the list of story ideas to assign reporters in the coming week.

By Thursday, the number of stories for Friday’s paper had dwindled considerably. This was just in time for the 16 pages that came through, filled with few advertisements and white space for stories in Friday’s paper.

We would’ve been fine with what we had; we would’ve been able to fill the paper without too much of a problem, except that a couple of our reporters weren’t able to get their stories done. Family problems, trouble contacting sources, all things that were out of anyone’s control.

We needed another story, fast.

Good thing we had the Catholic reaction story to fall back on. Only problem was, we didn’t have any reporters who had the time to cover it.

I knew all the questions that needed to be asked, all the issues that needed to be covered. I was already planning on going to Mass for Holy Thursday, so I volunteered to cover the story.

The idea that it might be a conflict of interest for a Roman Catholic reporter to cover a controversial topic involving the Roman Catholic Church didn’t enter my head until I was walking over to St. Thomas Aquinas Church.

Not very many people on the ISU campus probably know that I’m a parishioner at St. Thomas unless they are too. While my activities at church this year have consisted mainly of attending Mass every weekend, I have been much more involved in previous years and know a lot of the people at the parish.

Suddenly I felt very uncomfortable covering this story.

But Mass was in 30 minutes and there wasn’t anyone else who would be able to do it. While the conflict was still hanging in the back of my mind, the importance of getting the story was more pressing.

So I talked to Father Ev Hemann, the pastor at St. Thomas, and one parishioner. Neither of them had a whole lot to say. Apparently the issue of priest pedophile hasn’t been a big one at St. Thomas; Father Ev said he hadn’t gotten any questions or comments about it from anyone.

I walked back to the Daily, debating whether the topic was even worth a story. Would we just be sensationalizing an already prominent issue? Was it even worth the space we were going to give it?

The other editors in the Daily office had been thinking the same thing, and they brought it to me as soon as I walked into the office. Considering there wasn’t really any issue in the ISU Catholic community with priest pedophilia, we decided to pull the story and not risk the potential conflict of interest a Catholic reporter might add to it.

You’re probably wondering what point I’m trying to convey by telling this story.

Simply that avoiding conflicts of interest is sometimes a lot more difficult than it may appear.

Reporters at the Daily are usually involved in much more than just their duties to the paper. Student clubs and organizations, additional jobs – the whole spectrum shows up in the Daily’s newsroom. It’s part of being a college student, trying out each different talent and discovering which one is the most enjoyable.

And while I’d like for each of our reporters to be committed solely to the Daily, like professional newspapers require, I know this isn’t realistic if the we’re going to have any reporters at all.

So we address it as best we can, not assigning stories about the greek system to reporters in sororities or fraternities. Clubs and organizations are out of bounds, too, when we know which ones reporters are involved in.

Sometimes our system works perfectly; other times we find some flaws to address.

The night of the Catholic story illustrates how sometimes conflicts of interest can be a touchy subject at the Daily.

All decisions involving these issues are done stacking the costs of a potential conflict of interest against the value of a story to readers.

And while each instance is unique, in the end, I think an important story outweighs an overly involved reporter.

Andrea Hauser is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Edgewood. She is editor in chief of the Daily.