Nieman Foundation at Harvard
HOME
          
LATEST STORY
What audiences really want: For journalists to connect with them as people
ABOUT                    SUBSCRIBE
April 9, 2009, noon

If you’re arrested in St. Petersburg, make sure to smile for the camera

A new archive of mug shots on The St. Petersburg Times’ tampabay.com isn’t wanting for viewers: 100,000 people reportedly visited the site in the first three hours after its debut on Monday. And in some ways it’s just a web iteration of the old police blotter — or a technically advanced version of the old Puritan public stocks.

The feature, which posts a linear gallery of faces oddly reminiscent of The Washington Post’s uplifting onBeing — call this one “onBeing Busted” — includes sortable information by height, weight, gender and location. The busts are typically for the usual drug possessions, DUIs, and other charges a newspaper cop reporter would likely rifle past, looking for something more newsworthy.

Unlike The Smoking Gun, to which is has already been compared many times, it does not limit its focus to celebrities or those accused of particularly spectacular wrongdoing. These are people who don’t usually command the public eye. And unlike some previous efforts, this one seems to be posting even people arrested for misdemeanor offenses — not to mention a few for whom the site says it “had trouble” figuring out the exact charge an individual is facing.

How much is this for reader amusement and pageviews, and how much is for civic impact? Does the lens of the web change the way we think about things previously available as public records, but obscured by their location in some booking folder down at the jail? The mugs stay up for 60 days, and the site helpfully notes “those appearing here have not been convicted of the arrest charge and are presumed innocent.” Just like Cops.

It happened that the Poynter Institute’s multimedia guru Al Tompkins was here in Cambridge Wednesday, and we asked him for his take on it, both as a journalist and as a Tampa Bay resident. (Note that Poynter owns the Times.)

POSTED     April 9, 2009, noon
Show tags
 
Join the 60,000 who get the freshest future-of-journalism news in our daily email.
What audiences really want: For journalists to connect with them as people
Plus: How newsrooms are using generative AI, what makes news seem authentic on social media, and how to bridge the divide between academics and journalists.
When the winner’s name isn’t enough: How the AP is leaning into explanatory journalism to call races
“We’ve learned, especially in the last few cycles, that it’s not necessarily possible or a good idea to let [the electoral] process play out in silence.”
Votebeat assembles nearly 100 election experts to answer reporters’ questions (now, and in the weeks ahead)
“The problem with voting stories is that the people who make themselves most available don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”