The Blade | The Journal News
Toledo's mayor blasted The (Toledo, Ohio) Blade for publishing its own map of gang territories in the city, but he still refused to make public a police map of gang activity. The Blade made its map "after exhaustive interviews and research," Ignazio Messina writes.

Mayor Mike Bell said the map, which is part of a series, threatened outside investment in the city. The series started Sunday.

“I would say it is probably one of the most irresponsible forms of journalism that I have read in the paper since I have been in this city, from the standpoint of the recoil it possibly will have on the economy in terms of being able to recruit people and bring people in,” Mr. Bell said. “To me it is almost like kicking someone when they are down. ... Tell me what is the positive side of this?”

The Blade in July sued the city for allegedly violating the Ohio Public Records Act by restricting access to the police department's map, which is used to monitor gang activities and shootings. Several members of the city council -- as well as mayoral hopefuls -- have said they believe the map should be released, even as Bell insists Toledo's gang activity is “no different than any other metropolitan city.” (more...)

The Des Moines Register | The Blaze | Fox News
The Des Moines Register published then removed an interactive map Wednesday that looked at how school resource officers are deployed in Iowa after it drew criticism from people who thought the map showed unprotected districts. Or as Fox News host Megyn Kelly put it, "If I'm some psycho, I might wanna play my odds."

The map "identifies more than 100 public schools, from kindergarten through high school and community college campuses that have no security," Mike Opelka wrote on The Blaze.

The Register changed the map to show only districts with full-time security, Fox News reports, then ditched that map, too. The article, which has drawn some angry comments, now has no map -- and no note explaining what happened. (more...)

Daily Freeman
New York's tough new gun law allows holders of gun permits to opt out of having their names disclosed to those requesting public records. Last month, Dutchess County Clerk Bradford Kendall said gun permits "should be treated the same as a driver’s license”:

“If there is a legitimate need to look at an individual license there are certainly enough avenues to do that, but you cannot FOIL the entire list.”

This provision was added to the law by lawmakers upset that The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News published a map of gun owners' names and addresses it received via Freedom of Information Law requests to county clerks' offices. Putnam County Clerk Dennis Sant refused The Journal News' request, saying "There is the rule of law, and there is right and wrong and The Journal News is clearly wrong."

The opt-out provision is proving very popular. "At the moment, it’s a bit overwhelming," Ulster County Clerk Nina Postupack told Daily Freeman reporter Patricia Doxsey. Kendall told Doxsey his county will have to foot a large bill for the opt-outs.

Kendall said it could cost the county more than $32,000 to process the 2,200 opt-out forms he’s received so far and that if one-quarter of the 38,000 permit holders in Dutchess County file opt-out forms, it would cost the county more than $150,000 to process the requests.

Arkansas Business | Gawker
"I was stupid. Also naïve," Arkansas Business Editor Gwen Moritz writes about her decision to post, then take down, a list of Arkansas concealed carry permit holders' names and ZIP codes.

After she posted the list "my name, my husband’s name, home address, phone and work phone numbers and pictures of my house — from the same Pulaski County tax records that Arkansas Business regularly mines for news — were posted all over the Internet," Moritz writes.

Our home phone began ringing constantly, silenced only when we unplugged it in order to go to sleep. (This may be the prompt I needed to finally get rid of that landline.) My work email address filled up with requests, complaints, insults, veiled threats and, yes, quite a few messages of thanks and appreciation.

(more...)

Online Journalism Review | New Haven Register | Jim Romenesko | Boing Boing | Times Herald-Record | Chronicle of Higher Education
SUNY New Paltz students are learning "the cost of being a source." Professor Howard Good says he was harassed by gun-rights activists and had white powder mailed to his home after he was interviewed by The New York Times about The Journal News' map. He writes:

I spoke with the reporter, who was up against a deadline, for about 10 minutes. The story that appeared the next morning omitted at least 99.9 percent of our conversation. My contribution to public enlightenment consisted of a single remark shorn of context and nuance and stuck in a bottom paragraph that begged to go unread.

Still, that remark was followed almost immediately by emails and other reaction, Jeremiah Horrigan reports in the (Middletown, N.Y.) Times Herald-Record. (more...)

Bangor Daily News | Portland Press Herald | Morning Sentinel
The Bangor Daily News will no longer seek information about concealed-carry permits for firearms in Maine, Anthony Ronzio writes.

We have informed the agencies who received our request to disregard it. We’ve informed the agencies who have responded that their records will be destroyed.

The paper, Ronzio writes, "never would have published personally identifying information of any permit holder in Maine, as a newspaper in New York had done. To have done so would have been irresponsible to our readers and our communities." (more...)

Reuters
Arkansas' state senate has passed a bill banning the release of gun owners' names and ZIP codes, the only information currently available to seekers of public records under the state's Freedom of Information law.

"Republican state Senator Bruce Holland, the bill's sponsor, said he introduced the legislation after a constituent contacted him with concerns about the Journal News' actions," Suzi Parker reports. The suburban New York paper published a map of local gun-permit holders in late December, a move that caused New York state to tighten access to the records. The Journal News removed the map last month.

Nicholas Stehle of the gun-advocacy group Arkansas Carry said the names and ZIP codes of gun owners are "more information than I'd be comfortable sharing if I were a single woman with an abusive ex-husband." Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe opposes the bill, which now goes before the state house of representatives, in which Republicans have a small majority.

On Monday, Arkansas approved a law allowing people to bring guns into churches.

Capital
A New York appellate court has sided with the New York City Police Department in a dispute over whether it should turn over home addresses of handgun owners to The New York Times, which made a Freedom of Information Law request for them in 2010. Dana Rubinstein describes the court's thinking: Releasing the addresses "might endanger permit-holders, and, since the NYPD had already released the zip codes of permit-holders to the Times, would really serve no further journalistic purpose."

New York state approved a gun law last month that put a lid on public records about gun owners.

The Times had no plans to publish a Journal News-style map of gun owners in New York City, a Times source told Rubinstein in January:

The Times rarely, if ever, publishes raw data, and it had no intention of publishing the addresses of the permit holders, someone at the newspaper told me, when I called to ask about the suit.

Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy told Rubinstein the paper is "considering our legal next steps."

Previously: NYT reporters sued for gun owners’ addresses | Journal News fronts gun info about Congress members | Buffalo News requests gun data — to have, not to publish | Poynter's Journal News gun map archive

The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal-News isn't the only Gannett paper fronting an investigation into gun ownership among members of Congress by the company's Washington, D.C., bureau and USA Today. But it's probably the Gannett paper with the most celebrated history of tracking gun ownership. (more...)

The Journal News | Associated Press | The New York Times
The suburban New York newspaper's decision to take down its controversial gun map "is not a concession to critics that no value was served by the posting of the map in the first place," Publisher Janet Hasson writes in a letter to readers.

On the contrary, we’ve heard from too many grateful community members to consider our decision to post information contained in the public record to have been a mistake. Nor is our decision made because we were intimidated by those who threatened the safety of our staffers. We know our business is a controversial one, and we do not cower.

People have had enough time to view the map and its data will become outdated, Hasson writes. (more...)