Today's column in the print edition of the Baltimore Sun about a woman who was attacked outside a theater in Mount Vernon over the weekend generated some interesting questions from readers about whether it adequately addressed why there are fewer homicides this year compared to last.

Perhaps it was because I opened the piece with the latest homicide count -- 148 this year compared to 210 at this time last year. The position on the page also raised questions -- the item "Don't be lulled by low homicide numbers" was next to a shorter "crime watch" item headlined: "4 killed in 15 weekend shootings in the city."

Why did the robbery and assault on a visitor get more attention than the killings of four people and woundings of 15 others? It's a fair question. The item on the slayings wrapped up earlier coverage from the weekend. The assault was something we hadn't reported before.

But one reader complained that the column showed the Baltimore Sun's "new fluffy approach" and called the "human interest approach" both "ludicrous" and a "circus."

I disagree the column was fluffy. It told a story that too often gets relegated to a short blotter item. Too often we get complaints that the paper ignores these types of crimes, favoring instead the more lurid tales of murder that make for better headlines.

We need to hear and write about both. I urge readers to look back at coverage as a whole, to stories by my colleagues Julie Bykowicz, Annie Linskey, Melissa Harris and Gus G. Sentementes that have over the years documented the city's ills, failures, successes, muder and mayhem. There you will find answers to the complex question of what the crime statistics mean.

I wanted to show that the homicide numbers are but one measure for determing whether the city is safer than in the past. A woman from Columbia wrote to say that her family is too scared to visit Baltimore "because of the crime. I think of it daily and I hate the city."

I think that is the wrong approach as well. But killings, even a few, and attacks outside theaters certainly don't help selling Baltimore as a safe place to visit.