To the community,

Ever since the Iowa State Daily went online in 1995, the police blotter has been a regular part of the site. Our archive is missing only a few time periods that have been lost likely from switching from one content management system to another.

We suspect there are plenty of people who read the police blotter on page two or online just to see if you know anyone on it. However, the Daily, like most newspapers, is not as large in size as it was a few years ago, so blotter will be removed from the print edition soon, chiefly to allow more space for content.

The blotter includes the name, age, the charge and the person’s address or city of residence of all who are arrested. However, as we make the move to take this online, some of us began to rethink how we could improve it and our police records. And in complete honesty, we don’t cover the police and courts very well.

An arrest is simply the first step in the criminal process, and we publish it. Everyday we publish the names of those who have been arrested, but we don’t follow-up on those charges. And our list is incomplete because the location of the arrest is often left out.

The names in the police blotter are neither innocent nor guilty — as our disclaimer states at the beginning of each blotter publishing. We are not judge or jury, but we wonder if a name appearing in blotter influences the person public perception even if the charge were dropped or the person was found not guilty.

Currently, there are no exceptions to the rule and nothing has ever been deleted from our archive. But if people can provide documented proof the charges were dismissed or they were found not guilty, we will make a correction in the form of an addition to the entry, which we consider further reporting. We do not delete any part of the original entry. It has been our policy for the past three years. Of all the requests we receive to delete names, very few bring us the documentation we require as proof so that we can amend the entry.

The police blotter is public record. However, few publications use the approach we use with the names and addresses. Our fellow student publication at the University of Iowa, The Daily Iowan is one of the few student publications that has entries like we do. Our fellow Ames news organizations, the Ames Tribune and Ames News Online, publish blotter similar to the way we do. Other city publications like the Des Moines Register leave out the names.

In the future, we want to increase our presence of covering the police and courts. We want to publish what truly goes on the record. However, the question remains if the police blotter should still include actual names.

We want to know what you want to see from a crime page. There’s a poll on iowastatedaily.net to let you vote for what changes you’d like and another asking if you believe names should be included in the police blotter. We also want to hear from you. Do you care if names are in the blotter? What do want to see in crime coverage? You can e-mail [email protected] to give some detail and reasoning to your thoughts.

Anthony Capps

Editor in chief

[email protected]