If conditions right, minors' can be listed

The phones have been hot here at the Press Gazette.

Why?

Someone learned his or her child was in the paper for committing a crime.

Some facts you need to know when it comes to the commission of a crime in the State of Florida: The Sunshine state is becoming widely known for its stance of being in the Sunshine. Yes, there is not supposed to be any back door dealings.

But when it comes to crime the state is pretty straightforward.

If you commit a felony, albeit first, second, third, life, or capital degrees, then your name is public record and age is not a factor.

If you hit mom or dad, or a teacher, or steal something, deal in drugs, robbery, shoot someone, etc., it will be public record.

The state Legislature set that standard.

The next issue that has turned the business office number into a hotline: the Sheriff’s report.

As a news source we have printed the sheriff’s report for decades. This information (like police reports for stories) is provided by the Sheriff’s Office. We do not change anything they provide. People often call and ask to have their name withheld from the Sheriff’s Report. Only the Sheriff can instruct us to do so.

Thus it has been for years.

The Internet puts a whole new wrinkle on things.

Many parents of minors and those of individuals, who are not minors, do not want the names online.

We only post the name once, but the Internet keeps and archive.

And the search engines and web crawlers remember past stories and the names in them.

Long after a story has run, an internet search might still return results.

The fact is, newspapers have always been archived. You may visit the University of West Florida library. There you will find all the past issues of many papers…including the Press Gazette. Like the internet, you can puruse these papers and find past names in previous Sheriff’s reports and stories. In this sense, the Internet is just like newspaper archives from decades ago…just more convenient.

Yes, even before the advent of the Internet, there were archives of newspapers. The technical term is bound books or bound files.

There are several ways to look at this issue.

Complicating the matter even more is the advent of technology.

Social pages like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are not only used by you and your friend, but human resource departments and representatives when checking out job applicants and references. An ill-placed photo on one of these sites today, could come back to bite in a decade or so.

Just like a recent story on the election where they asked questions about past events involving felonies, arrests and such, the Internet will remember all of this.

We can only hope it is equally as accomplished at remember good things.