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There’s an old saying that we all learned as a child: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

The phrase is meant to serve as a reminder that we should never judge anything by its outward appearance, whether that’s a human being or a literal book.

For us, as a news organization, it means reading more than the headline.

A headline’s purpose is to give a quick idea of what the story says, and we, and other news organizations, try to be as comprehensive as possible.

However, most headlines are very short, especially in print.

They try to summarize what happened but are never able to provide all of the details of an incident.

We often see a lot of comments on our social media page where we instantly know that the person commenting didn’t read further than the headline. We hate when that happens, as our reporters work very hard to get all sides of a story, and obviously they want people to read their work.

We hear a lot from local leaders, fearful that a headline will take off, grab attention and that most people will never read the rest of the story.

We can’t make people read beyond the headline, but we certainly wish they would.

Don’t judge a book by its cover — we encourage you to read the whole story.