Newsrooms Rethink a Crime Reporting Staple: The Mugshot

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/02/11/newsrooms-rethink-a-crime-reporting-staple-the-mugshot

Online mugshot galleries, where news organizations post rows of people who were arrested, once seemed like an easy moneymaker for struggling newsrooms: Each reader click to the next image translated to more page views and an opportunity for more advertising dollars.

But faced with questions about the lasting impact of putting these photos on the internet, where they live forever, media outlets are increasingly doing away with the galleries of people on the worst days of their lives.

Last month, the Houston Chronicle became the latest major paper to take that plunge. At an all-hands staff meeting, the paper’s editors announced their decision to stop posting slideshows of people who have been arrested but not convicted—and who are still presumed innocent under law.

“Mugshot slideshows whose primary purpose is to generate page views will no longer appear on our websites,” Mark Lorando, a managing editor at the Chronicle, later explained in an email to The Marshall Project. “We’re better than that.”

Interestingly, the journalist who wrote this, Keri Blakinger, became a criminal justice reporter after serving time on drug felony charges.

[3Hotdogs]

1. Good idea.

Of course, there's a whole website devoted to mug shots and police reports.

[exboyfil]

2. You are going to deny us Gary Busey's famous mugshot

Ha Ha.

It is a good idea though. It is bad enough that just being in the system can impact employment decisions.