After unknowingly presenting someone with a criminal record as one of Roanoke's most eligible singles, The Roanoke Times has suspended the weekly feature while assessing how best to vet its subjects in the future.

Editor Mike Riley said the decision was made after the newspaper received phone calls and an e-mail saying that a subject profiled in the paper's Inside Out section has a record that includes several misdemeanor convictions.

"It's a most regrettable and unfortunate incident, and what we're trying to do is rectify the situation," Riley said Friday. "I wish the subject had been more forthcoming with ... pertinent facts, but I wish we had done a better job of eliciting this information."

The Roanoke Times has not asked Most Eligible subjects about their criminal history.

Several people have contacted the io section seeking to get in touch with the subject, but none of their information has been or will be passed on to the subject, Riley said.

The Roanoke Times is not naming the subject because the newspaper typically does not report on misdemeanor cases.

The subject has been convicted of making a phone threat, contempt of court and possession of marijuana, and is wanted in another state on a disorderly conduct charge stemming from an argument with a romantic partner. The subject also was placed on probation for three years after being charged with selling cocaine.

The discovery calls into question the degree to which a newspaper should be responsible for vetting the people it spotlights. Inside Out has profiled 41 men and women in Most Eligible since the feature first ran Jan. 27. Only the background of the subject who came into question has been investigated by the newspaper.

Among the ideas under consideration for the Most Eligible feature, Riley said, is having would-be subjects fill out a more detailed questionnaire that could include questions about criminal history. But he said the newspaper would not start doing criminal background checks because it isn't standard practice for every story.

Although it is possible that Most Eligible will not be brought back, Riley noted that it is a popular feature. "Readers like it; we like it," he said. "We just need to figure out a way to do it better."

Kelly McBride, who runs the ethics program at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists and journalism teachers in St. Petersburg, Fla., said newspapers have an unwritten contract with readers promising to report the whole truth. That bar is raised when a paper makes an editorial judgment, such as one that declares someone "most eligible."

She also said The Roanoke Times should have anticipated the problem. "This is one that you really could have predicted," she said.

Patrick Butler, who trains journalists on media ethics and is the vice president of programs at the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C., agreed with McBride that labeling someone as "most eligible" essentially puts a stamp of approval on him or her.

"The logical expectation of the reader is that the newspaper has placed this person out there as a worthy date," he said.

"It sounds like it's just a nice little feature that had some unforeseen consequences," Butler added. "But I guess it's lucky no one was hooked up with" the subject.