About a week ago, a caller made a comment about The Kansas City Star&#8217;s organization that I&#8217;ve heard many times: &#8220;I just don&#8217;t get this &#8216;Today&#8217;s Top 5&#8217; list.&#8221;</p><p>She was referring to the May 21 list on Page A-2, where the first brief was headlined &#8220;Senate delivers Obama bipartisan defeat.&#8221; The item succinctly detailed a Senate vote the day before to keep the Guantanamo Bay detention facility open indefinitely, and not to allow any of the detainees there to be transferred to prisons in the U.S.</p><p>The caller thought the choice of that story as first in the &#8220;Top 5&#8221; for the day sent mixed messages. &#8220;On one hand, you&#8217;re saying this is the most important thing that happened, but you don&#8217;t spend any time telling us more. But there are two other articles about Guantanamo on the same page, and they don&#8217;t even mention the vote. Is the right hand talking to the left at The Star?&#8221;</p><p>I have to admit that I, too, am sometimes a little confused by the &#8220;Top 5&#8221; lists on A-2 and the World Watch page. The list appeared with the paper&#8217;s 2006 redesign, then with 10 entries. Many duplicated stories that also ran in longer form elsewhere in the paper.</p><p>It&#8217;s a concept analogous to headline links on a Web page, allowing you to seek out the items you&#8217;re interested in.</p><p>I liked that idea, but I do agree that it resulted in redundancy sometimes, especially when an item in a &#8220;Top&#8221; list pointed to another story right on the same page. Editors have been approaching the lists with a different philosophy in recent weeks, using briefs that don&#8217;t appear elsewhere.</p><p>That makes sense from an economy standpoint, especially on days with smaller papers &#8212; but I understand fully that it can create a disconnect with readers.</p><p>As one put it, &#8220;How can you say it&#8217;s the most important story of the day, but not put it on the front page?&#8221;</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Getting in touch</span></strong></p><p>Many kind readers contacted me after a May 18 story about Sudanese refugees Elamin Suraj, Wafa Kut and their children, whose living conditions were substandard, like those of many refugee families arriving in the U.S. in the middle of a worldwide recession.</p><p>Those readers wanted the family&#8217;s address or phone number to offer assistance directly &#8212; a generosity that I&#8217;ve come to expect from Kansas Citians.</p><p>My answer, though, is always the same: The Star doesn&#8217;t distribute contact information for anyone other than its own staff members.</p><p>In this case, I suggested that people contact Jewish Vocational Service, the organization working with the family, to ask about their needs.</p><p>That goes for the subject of any story, people who write letters to the editor, or any other private citizen. It would be an invasion of privacy for a journalist to give out any personal information.