AP no longer naming suspects in minor crime stories

Is this a good idea? Should your paper adopt it? AP Definitive Source | Why we’re no longer naming suspects in minor crime stories

 

Yeah, I’m fine with it. Except DUIs. Name those fuckers.

 

Gonna make the racists who demand a headshot and description mad.

 

Meh, I gave up AP policy several years ago.

 

We can still call them Florida Man though right?

 

Or an old Keystone Light ad.

 

The real problem with small-ass paper crime reporting is the police blotter. Arrests of all kinds happily reported, jurisprudence (especially of misdemeanors) not so much. We had that problem at Patch, never covered run of the mill court decisions. That's given rise to execrable mugshot extortion websites. In fact, I only once reported how a case played out (dismissed) when the accused requested I do so as she said the old online news item was sabotaging her job interviews.

 

Ack! Pfffbt!!

 

FWIW - I was at a Patch site, but I *did* always follow up with the court results. Of course, this meant that I had to maintain my own multi-page spreadsheet to do so, but it was a carryover from the local paper I worked at before.

I kind of go back and forth with the reporting of "minor" crimes. Like, a DUI is a non-felony crime in most jurisdictions, but its arguably of public interest to plenty of people, depending on the circumstances. The same thing goes for repeated, non-felony assaults and domestic assaults. When I was covering the crime beat, we had a woman who had a vehicular homicide and it seemed like her first offense according to the court database... Until we checked our own database, and found out she had a slew of previous offenses, and just paid small fines and got them expunged. I'm not sure where you draw the "line" here, but also, given the dwindling resources at all papers, I realize most of them can't do the diligence of reporting the initial arrest and following up properly to begin with.