NWH FAQs re Police Blotters

I was very interested in Northwest Herald Editor Chris Krug's editorial this morning about the Police Blotters printed in the Northwest Herald (NWH).

A few months ago I inquired of the NWH about the Police Blotter for Woodstock, and I learned that the paper prints the Woodstock crime information about once a month. I haven't kept a score sheet on the other community's Blotters in the NWH, but it seems to me that once a month just doesn't cover everything happening in Woodstock.

For example, in February the Woodstock Police Department reported that there was $152,000 in Stolen Property Value, which was a huge jump. Was this covered by the NWH? I don't remember seeing anything about it. Even the City Council didn't know about it until May, unless it got the information separately from the February 2009 Police Department Report to the City.

Chris Krug wrote, "We publish the information provided to us by the police as we receive it and do not make deletions from it."

The Woodstock Independent (TWI) publishes a Police Blotter weekly so, if you want to know what is really going on crime-wise in Woodstock, that's the paper to read.

When I set up www.WoodstockCrimeLog.info, I asked the Woodstock Police Department to provide me with the same information that it was providing to the NWH and TWI. After several weeks of delay, I received a letter from the City Attorney that my blog did not qualify as "news media" because it wasn't published at regular intervals.

Well, you need information to publish regularly. If you can't get crime reports, there is little to write about on a blog dedicated to crime reports.

Another reason for denying the "news media" classification was low readership, referring to only 2,000 hits in a year which, of course, had to be gleaned from the WoodstockAdvocate.com, not the new WoodstockCrimeLog.info.

Since even I did not know how many were reading WoodstockAdvocate.com, I put a counter on the blog. The total page views are now running about 9,000 - per month. If this keeps up, that'll be 84,000 in a year. Maybe it's time to submit another request.

Lastly, the City noted that the Local Records Act doesn't refer to blogs as "news media." Section 3 (c) of that Act reads, "For the purposes of this Section the term "news media" means personnel of a newspaper or other periodical issued at regular intervals whether in print or electronic format, a news service whether in print or electronic format, a radio station, a television station, a television network, a community antenna television service, or a person or corporation engaged in making news reels or other motion picture news for public showing."

True; "blog" or "weblog" is not specifically mentioned. I wonder what "electronic media" is, if it is not a blog.

Is the Act a little out-dated? "News reels"? "Motion picture news"? OK, let's see if Senator Althoff and Rep. Tryon can get their buddies to throw "blog" into the Act.

Of course, I could file a FOIA Request every week or every month with the Woodstock Police Department and just go in to review the crime reports.

As Chris Krug wrote, "The information we receive from police is available to anyone, as it is public information. We publish it as a service to the community, as it is their right to know what is going on in the community and how the police are responding."

Thank you, Chris!