Setting policies in the news business can be tricky. It doesn’t take long for exceptions and apparent contradictions to worm their way into those well-intentioned guidelines.

In the five years I have been editor of The Daily News I have changed many policies. It’s not so much that I know better than the people who worked here before me, it’s more an acknowledgement this is an evolving business. It always has been.

Examples of some of the changes I’ve made include reporting on suicides, drug overdoses and what kind of photos we publish.

In the past, every suicide warranted a short story in the paper. Same with drug overdoses.

I never saw the value to the newspaper or readers in reporting those. Suicide is a very personal tragedy and I believe we compound that by making it public. Reporting on drug overdoses almost always lacked the context to make the stories of value to anyone.

We would routinely report a person had died of “a suspected drug overdose.” Rarely did a story appear later saying if those suspicions had been confirmed or what kind of drug had been used.

Most readers likely imagined someone had taken too much heroin or some other illegal drug. But maybe that drug overdose was the result of a horrible mistake with a legal prescription. To report the original suspicions rightly required, but rarely received, a follow-up story.

Now, for the exceptions. If someone commits suicide in a very public way, we’re going to write a story. They have created a news event and we’re obligated to tell people what happened. Also, if a public figure commits suicide it may justify a news story.

With overdoses, if there is a tainted drug in the community that has killed several people it is news. There are always, it seems, exceptions.

Photos are another area of change. This paper would occasionally publish pictures of people who were victims of violence or accidents. That included local photos and photos provided by The Associated Press. The argument is that such photos convey in a compelling way the magnitude of the tragedy.

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. Such pictures also were good for dozens of calls of complaint. Many readers have no desire to see such things and neither do I.

I’ve never bought the argument that a photo showing a soldier in Iraq immediately after having his legs blown off somehow “brings home the reality of war.” Are we so dense that we can’t read that someone lost their legs and understand what that means?

This newspaper, and most others, used to scramble photographers to any major vehicle accident we heard on the police scanner. Then, there would be photos of twisted metal and, sometimes, an injured person on a gurney or someone being tended to on the side of the road.

I’ve always thought those sorts of photos were far too intrusive.

Still, there can be exceptions. If there is a huge wreck involving many vehicles, deaths and multiple injuries we’re likely to show up. But we’re going to be careful with what we publish.

New Web site coming

We’re not yet ready to give you all the details and specific dates, but our Web site, tdn.com, will soon be undergoing a complete redesign.

With the Internet, nothing stays the same for long as technology advances. Our Web site will be cleaner, easier to use and have many new features. As we get closer to launch we’ll be providing plenty of information to help prepare our rapidly growing online audience.

Cal FitzSimmons is the editor of The Daily News. He can be reached at 577-2579 or at cfitzsimmons@tdn.com. He’s also on Twitter at @CalFitzSimmons