Talk:The Daily Iowan

Publishing criminal records

Some recent edits by Californiawikieditor:

The Daily Iowan publishes arrest records of Iowans, including college students. They then publish the arrest articles to google, where they remain indefinitely whether or not the person is convicted. This rather hateful reporting, although perfectly legal, has damaged thousands of lives and continues to date.

The Daily Iowan publishes arrest records of Iowa's college students. They then publish the arrest articles to google, where they remain indefinitely whether or not the person is convicted. This controversial reporting has damaged thousands of lives and continues to date. It is part of the larger problem of the merge between government and media, a tell-tale sign of fascism.

The Daily Iowan publishes arrest records of Iowans, including students at the University of Iowa. They then publish the arrest articles to google, where they remain indefinitely whether or not the person is convicted. For some reason, this information has been frequently censored.

The Daily Iowan is a right-wing, 19,500-circulation daily student newspaper serving Iowa City and the University of Iowa community. It has consistently won a number of collegiate journalism awards, including multiple National Pacemaker Awards. The editors rewrite and publish police logs, then publish them to google where they remain permanently. This is extremely damaging to college students, whose charges remain on google even if they were not convicted of those charges, and even if the charges were not reported accurately by the Daily Iowan.

My issues with these edits:

• The newspaper does not "publish the arrest articles to google" -- Google (and the various other search engines) crawl the web and find the pages by themselves, the newspaper doesn't push the articles to Google. At least, get rid of "Google" as this is not limited to Google.
• For reference, the criminal records are indeed visible on the web (such as http://media.www.dailyiowan.com/media/storage/paper599/news/2008/03/07/Metro/Police.Blotter-3258233.shtml ). I do find it a bit odd to list such minor issues ("public intoxication" etc) on the web (and presumably in print as well), but then again, I live on the other side of the pond where the standards in journalism might be slightly different. And as Californiawikieditor said, this is perfectly legal.
• "hateful reporting" -- this implies that they're intentionally trying to damage the reputation of those persons. Please tone down your language a bit.
• "It is part of the larger problem of the merge between government and media, a tell-tale sign of fascism" -- well, let me just say that I'm glad you removed this.
• It appears that publishing criminal records is a common habit in smaller newspaper -- see these for example: http://www.independentmail.com/news/2007/aug/03/arrest-records-anderson-and-oconee-counties/ , http://www.localcrimenews.com/city/1623/Los-Angeles-crime-news.html , http://www.statesboroherald.com/news/section/11/ , http://www.telegram.com/article/20080304/COURTRECORDS/803040617/-1/court_records_recent -- I fail to see why it's noteworthy to mention that Daily Iowan does the same.
• The placement of your edit makes it look like the primary purpose of the Daily Iowan is to publish criminal records. If you must express your criticism about The Daily Iowan, please at least place it to some less prominent place in the article. Newspapers do attract criticism, The New York Times has even its own page for criticism at Criticism of The New York Times, but that's probably because it's a slightly larger newspaper than The Daily Iowan.

Sorry, but I think it's better to revert the changes you've made until some kind of a consensus is found. Avij (talk) 19:44, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Virtually every local newspaper publishes the "crime blotter" or "police report" or something of the sort. When the police are called out - and particularly when an arrest is made, it goes into the newspaper. It's not unusual - it would be unusual if a paper failed to do this. --Tim4christ17 ^talk 03:40, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

They are indeed intentionally damaging the reputations of people and benefitting from their losses in a hateful way. Ain't no bones about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Californiawikieditor (talk • contribs) 18:27, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I also feel the comments about the fact that the Daily Iowan publishes the police blotter. Other small newspaper do indeed do this as well. Also the comments by Californiawikieditor are absurd. The Daily Iowan is not publishing these name to "intentially damage the reputations of people and benefitting from their losses in a hateful way.", what happened were that these people got in trouble by the police, the police reported it, the Daily Iowan wanted these reports to publish and these peoples name happened to be on the report. Could the names have been disguised or kept confidential maybe, but the comments by californiawikieditor are absurd in my opinion and unnecessary in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.243.210.64 (talk) 09:17, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Besides californiawikieditor's comments in this Talk page, is there any evidence that the Daily Iowan publishing arrest records has actually received criticism? -Dempf (talk) 16:51, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Clarifying removal of UI template:

The Daily Iowan is not funded by the University of Iowa by any means other than payment for production and distribution across campus. While staff at the Daily Iowan are often otherwise affiliated with the UI, that affiliation is entirely distinct from their work with the Daily Iowan. The Daily Iowan rents its location on the campus, as well. Affiliation with the University is an extremely sensitive issue due to the implications. (University-funded newspapers are often censored to some extent and required to produce advertorials highlighting university topics.) It may be worth noting that the staff is primarily comprised of UI students and journalism school professors, and that the paper is distributed campus-wide as a service paid for by the Student Government via an annual fee included in tuition.

In short, claiming that the Daily Iowan is affiliated with the University of Iowa is both untrue and reflects poorly on the integrity of the paper as a whole. 128.255.216.144 (talk) 22:02, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I've re-added {{University of Iowa}} to the page. This is a navigation template, so it isn't just used for groups that are formally affiliated, but for groups of pages that are likely to be useful links for the reader. If you believe the template should be changed to make the Daily Iowan's status more clear, feel free to change/propose a change to Template:University of Iowa. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 15:04, 31 July 2009 (UTC)