Recently The Blade did something it — and most other newspapers — very seldom do:

The paper printed the names of three juveniles charged with criminal offenses in two separate school bullying cases.

When one reader saw that, he left me a message saying “Isn’t that illegal? Isn’t naming minors against the law?”

Well, no, it isn’t, not in Ohio nor Michigan. The editors told me this does not represent any major change in direction for The Blade, nor an attempt to sensationalize the news.

Kurt Franck, The Blade’s executive editor, said it was not something the newspaper did lightly — that it was a carefully considered policy decision based on the severity of the situation.

“We consider naming juveniles charged with serious crimes, and usually have a discussion among multiple editors before doing so. These were cases of severe school bullying, and we decided to name the suspects,” said Dave Murray, The Blade’s managing editor.

“With so many teenagers committing suicide or having lasting damages done to their lives, this has become a very serious situation. Juveniles who engage in such bullying and have criminal charges filed against them should expect to have their names printed in news stories in The Blade,” he added.

Indeed, these two cases were ones with very serious and lasting consequences for the victims.

In one of the cases, 14-year-old Lucas Middleton was arrested by Perrysburg police and charged with pandering sexually oriented matter after he allegedly used his cell phone to film a younger boy in the school bathroom and then used social media to send the video to others.

In the other case, two Sylvania youths, both of whom were 14, are accused of making another 14-year-old eat a candy push pop after wiping it in a bathroom urinal.

They then, according to a surveillance video, kicked and punched the unlucky youth, who has developmental disabilities.

One of the youths, Mitchell Miller, has already admitted in juvenile court to both counts he was charged with: assault and violation of the Ohio Safe Schools Act. He is scheduled back in court April 25. The other youngster, Hunter McKie, is due in court for a pretrial conference Monday.

Yet why name them? Youngsters, especially perhaps teenage boys, are notorious for showing bad judgment and doing stupid things. Probably nobody would defend what they did. In my time, these boys would likely have gotten the paddle from the principal, and a licking later from their fathers.

But that was before the rise of social media. There have been several horrific cases nationally and internationally of young teenagers who actually committed suicide after someone posted nude or embarrassing pictures of them on social media.

Try to cast your mind back to when you were 14, and think of what your life would be like at school and elsewhere if everybody in your universe had seen video of you in a restroom stall.

Even when the material is taken down, there’s never any guarantee that someone didn’t copy it, and could at any time repost it. Now think of the other youth, a boy who is already trying to fit in to school with developmental disabilities. Now, thanks to two bullies, everybody in his school knows that he ate something that had been wiped on a urinal.

Kids can be excruciatingly cruel. Do you think he will ever hear the last of that all the time he is in school? The editors told me their decision to name these kids came after prosecutors saw fit to charge them with serious offenses — a second-degree felony in the case of the Middleton youth.

Your ombudsman thinks there was nothing unethical about the newspaper naming these three — especially in a world where, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than two million students are the victims of cyberbullying every year.

They have already damaged two young lives. If naming and publicly embarrassing them causes some other youngster to think twice before damaging someone on social media, that would, in my opinion, more than justify that decision.

But I would also like to hear what readers think. Please feel free to call or email me at the contacts listed at the end of this column, or write me c/​o The Blade.

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Many readers have complained in recent years that their letters to the editor have been excessively rewritten.

Sometimes, your ombudsman thought they had a point. Now, there is a new policy: Keith Burris, who became The Blade’s editorial page editor last month, wrote in his column last week: “We will clean up your spelling and punctuation, we will not publish factual errors, slanders, or libel.

“But we will not stifle your voice or cut your letters so severely that they lose their personality and punch.”

Hopefully this will lead to more satisfied writers. (Don’t, however, complain if your 5,000-word letter on crabgrass was drastically shortened to make it fit on the page.)

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Toledoan Carolyn Suter did have another question about the letters policy. She noted that when someone writes a letter from a suburb or surrounding city, The Blade indicates that the letter was written by “John Smith, Maumee.”

“But if the writer is from Toledo, they list the street. Some streets are rather small, and some people can figure out who wrote it, and then harass them or send them hate mail.”

Your ombudsman thinks she is right. I have talked to several people who have been the victims of harassing or even threatening phone calls after their letters appeared.

There is, however, a good reason The Blade long ago began including people’s streets with their letters: Suppose one woman named Jane Doe in East Toledo just loves Donald Trump and writes to say she supports his policies.

But what if there’s another Jane Doe in South Toledo who absolutely despises Mr. Trump and everything he stands for?

If the letter is just printed as “Jane Doe, Toledo,” it could cause vast confusion, even fist fights.

My recommendation would be for the editorial page to compromise and list Toledo writers as being from “North Toledo, South Toledo, Old West End, etc.”

By the way, in case anyone is thinking of playing a prank on someone — the newspaper does check each letter that may be published to verify it is from a real person at a real address.

Anyone who has a concern about fairness or accuracy in The Blade is invited to write me, c/​o The Blade; 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, 43660, or at my Detroit office: 555 Manoogian Hall, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202; call me, at 1-888-746-8610 or email me at OMBLADE@aol.com.

I cannot promise to address every question in the newspaper, but I do promise that everyone who contacts me with a serious question will get a personal reply.

Reminder, however: If you don’t leave me an email address or a phone number, I have no way to get in touch with you.

Jack Lessenberry is a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and a former national editor of The Blade.

First Published April 3, 2016, 4:00 a.m.