Note: MPR update appended noon Tuesday; Star Tribune comment added 1:30 p.m.

Friday's Pioneer Press features a front-pager featuring a 54-year-old elementary school teacher who lives with his parents on a St. Joseph farm. The teacher is "one of the best trumpet players in central Minnesota," a "sweet guy, soft spoken, smiling," and "well-liked by the kids."

Why front page news? The man had "previously has given DNA samples, taken a lie-detector test and been hypnotized in connection with" Jacob Wetterling's disappearance, according to an unnamed family member.

Last week, law enforcement officials swarmed to the farm with dirt-diggers and a mobile crime lab. The St. Cloud Times, MPR, KSTP, WCCO, Fox9, KARE and the Associated Press joined the PiPress in publishing the man’s name. Many media outlets did so after the Times revealed the authorities consider the man a “person of interest” in the Wetterling case.

But you won't find the man’s name — or that of his parents who own the farm — anywhere in the Star Tribune. In fact, going back through the history of the Wetterling case, the Strib has never published the family's moniker, according to a staffer who checked the archives.

In the 21 long years the case has lingered, it appears the Strib’s only mention came four days ago in this July 2 AP story on startribune.com. The Strib routinely auto-posts AP stories to its website without human intervention — a good way to subvert a paper's standards, as I've noted before — and I’d guess that’s what happened here. (Strib brass wasn’t available over the holiday weekend, or first thing this morning.)

The Strib has long had a policy against naming uncharged criminal suspects, though there have been exceptions. The reasoning is that suspicion alone shouldn't be enough to besmirch someone's name; authorities should at least have enough facts to charge a person before the media blares it to the world.

(I’m not naming the man in case you agree with the Strib. You can easily click through to one of the stories if you’re curious.) 

Update: Strib managing editor Rene Sanchez says:

"It’s a tough call, and we had a good debate. Both sides of the argument have merit. We ended up not naming for a couple of reasons: On that case, we’ve had a longstanding protocol of not naming anyone at that farm, and nothing in the police activity of last week was so striking or seismic that we felt we needed to shift gears after so many years of not naming. But if circumstances in the investigation change, we’ll certainly revisit the question. Beyond that case, we rarely name someone who has not even been arrested or identified as a suspect, much less charged."

The current case seems to accentuate the divide between the Strib and everyone else. Not only won’t the Strib name the “person of interest,” they won’t name the farm’s owners, who are not under suspicion. In all likelihood, editors felt naming the parents would, de facto, identify the son.

The PiPress' standard is different; if the facts are right — authorities really are investigating someone, and it's newsworthy — why shouldn't the public know?

Pioneer Press editor Thom Fladung — who says he understands that “newsrooms need guidelines” — explains his decision this way:

“At the Pioneer Press, we start from the standpoint that we name names. Because that's what newspapers do. Then let's discuss whether there are compelling reasons to not name names. And there often are such reasons. We generally don't name victims of sexual assault. A person's safety or livelihood may be put at risk by being named. And there can be many other reasons to withhold names.

“Then, of course, there are a host of other considerations that can come into play. How public is the event? What's the event associated with? What best serves readers?

“In this case, law enforcement agencies have decided to do a large search related to a very high-profile criminal case at a specific residence. It seems logical to, then, answer this question for readers: Who lives there? I don't see a compelling reason to not answer that question. I also would note that the Pioneer Press has not identified anyone in these stories as a ‘suspect’ -- named or unnamed, charged or uncharged.”

True, though only a very careful reader wouldn’t quickly draw a negative inference about the man. In an interview with the St. Cloud Times last week, he complained that “he has received death threats and threatening e-mails, which he has reported to authorities.”

That’s precisely the sort of thing Strib editors don’t want to be complicit in. However, now that the man has spoken publicly, it's one more time the paper must obscure the facts it knows.

In the past, I’ve complained about the Strib’s willingness to let its comment section become a public sewer, but in this case, they are standing virtually alone in applying a high standard of disclosure. (Update: While MPR published the man's name as a resident of the farm, it did so before the "person of interest" information came out, and the network has not linked the two facts on-air or on the web.)

I'll admit, I want to know who the guy is, but I'd feel squeamish about reporting it given the lack of incriminating facts so far. So I ask you: Is the Strib right, or at this point in the saga, has their standard become ridiculous? Comments most welcome.