At Trolley Square on Monday, six people died and several other were seriously wounded when a young man went on a shooting rampage. For loved ones left behind, life has changed forever. It is theirs to agonize, to ponder the senselessness of it all, to grieve.

They are not alone. Countless people throughout Utah and across the nation grieve with them. No feeling person can be unmoved by what happened.

As journalists, we often witness tragedy up close. On Monday, we saw the police, the ambulances, the frightened patrons, the wounded and the dead. We observed a man desperately asking to look through a photographer's lens to see whether the woman lying there on the familiar brick floor of Trolley Square was his wife. And we saw him crumple in grief as he confirmed that it was.

These are hard moments. We do not take them lightly. We sometimes struggle with our mission in the community, which is to provide a true sense of both the facts and the emotion of major events. We believe that this is what most of our readers expect us to do. Reporters and photographers would sometimes prefer to turn away, but do not because of a sense of duty. The public not only has a right to know, it has a responsibility to know.

News articles and photogrpahs are the tools of the trade by which we inform the public. Without them, how could anybody really feel the full weight of what happened?

The argument is sometimes made, usually in connection with death and human tragedy, that newspapers should not publish difficult pictures, that such images are invasive, that they hurt the people involved. It is a fair argument.

And yet, what would be the cost to a community if a newspaper were to sanitize its depiction of the world, publishing only Kodak moments of smiles and balloons and vibrant children, as though difficulty doesn't exist?

We published the picture of the dead woman because it compels us to engage, to feel and to remember.

An easy picture makes it easier for people to simply dismiss one more tragedy, to change the channel, to turn away from yet another death, to put it out of mind and get back to daily routine. Easy pictures invite us to insulate ourselves from too much feeling.

Such half-reporting is fundamentally wrong because it undercuts an important definition of community -- embracing and supporting one another in life's darkest moments.

The newspaper should be a vehicle for encouraging compassion, for creating bonds and moving people to action. We believe, ultimately, that this will be the result of our publishing the picture in Tuesday's newspaper.

We do not, and never shall, support the publication of gratuitous, graphic displays of death, whose sole purpose is to shock. The picture we published is not of that sort, though it is heart wrenching. It was not sensationalized. Sensationalizing means that a news organization created a stir where none was warranted. Clearly, that is not the case with this photograph. The event itself was sensational enough; it required no help from us. If anything, our photograph was an understatement.

The simple storytelling of that photograph goes beyond idle curiosity. It captured the sense of loss shared by the families of all the victims. A few readers found the photo disturbing, but perhaps that is exactly the point, and the value. It awakens us. The Trolley Square casualties are not just numbers on a page; they are real people with families whose lives are forever altered.

The message of the photograph is not that no one cares. Its message is that life is priceless. In many respects that image is more powerful than the written word.

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What do you think?

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The Daily Herald will publish comments on Feb. 25.