Yesterday we published one of our routine crime stories. Every once in a while we get reader criticism of these stories and we should just let it go (cue Idina Menzel). But one particular criticism really bothers us.
We do write positive stories. Since the day we started we’ve published over 900 stories. Only 12% of them are in the “crime” category.
Crime stories barely rank in our top 5 categories, and only by a tie. It’s an even smaller percentage on Facebook because we post other things that don’t go on the website and those are almost never arrest stories.
Even some of our crime stories are positive. We recently did two stories to try to help solve crimes. One was of the Sandalfoot bank robber, and another was of a recent hit-and-run accident on Glades with a photo of the fleeing vehicle.
We have also done two stories about how low the crime rate is in West Boca compared to East Boca and the rest of the county, and also looking at crime rates in Boca by zip code. This was not easy. We had to do a public records request from the Sheriff, pay for the cost of getting us the data, and then spent hours working through the data in a spreadsheet. We’re not done on that by the way – we’re working on all the zip codes in the county for the upcoming part 3 of that series.
We cover:
Local theatre including both schools and the professional Slow Burn Theatre Company
Local events including the West Boca Chamber breakfasts and West Boca Community Council meetings.
Businesses opening and closing, like the new We Rock the Spectrum gym for kids with autism.
Restaurant inspections, news and reviews. This, by the way, is our own favorite category.
And plenty more.
But here’s the harsh truth. Even though crime stories are only 12% of what we write, they are the stories people read. Here are the top stories on our website for the past quarter.
Out of the 24 we were able to squeeze into this image, the vast majority are crime-related. Even our restaurant inspection reports may be viewed as negative (though we try to lead with the good ones).
It’s not our fault that those are the ones people read the most. If we were motivated solely by that, we would write a lot more crime stories and write less about other things.
But let’s be clear. We’re not ashamed about writing arrest stories. They’re important. We approach them from a different angle than most other media. We research the arrestee’s crime history and tell our readers when we think the arrests look dubious.
For example, three local 18-year-olds were recently arrested for underage possession of alcohol. We wrote that story questioning why they were arrested. It’s not the kids who should be humiliated by the story – it’s the Sheriff and the deputies who carried out the arrests, and frankly the voters in West Boca and elsewhere who are ultimately responsible for it.
In yesterday’s story about the weekend arrests that drew negative comments, readers asserted we were humiliating this young woman by posting her photo:
That is a modeling picture that she posted on her Facebook profile publicly. She’s proud of the picture. We also questioned the arrest for “resisting an officer without violence,” writing:
That charge that is so vague that it is often dismissed.
In another Facebook post about it we said, “it looks like a bogus arrest to us.” We’re not attacking the young woman. We’re defending her.
If you’re upset about the story you should direct your concerns to the Sheriff or your other elected officials. Tell them to stop making unnecessary arrests.
If you feel like you’re only seeing negative stories then please subscribe to our West Boca News weekly e-mail newsletter. You’ll get a much more positive perspective on West Boca than what you see on Facebook.
