Back in the earlier days of the Internet, one of my first web apps I created as a reporter was a local crime map (inspired by, but much less sophisticated than

Back in the earlier days of the Internet, one of my first web apps I created as a reporter was a local crime map (inspired by, but much less sophisticated than Adrian Holovaty's chicagocrime.org [0]). This involved contacting each police department individually and asking them to email me the data. A couple of departments were happy, because they didn't want to pay to develop their own online map. Others (small jurisdictions) didn't have the IT process in place. But there were also large departments that definitely had a data process, but declined to participate (and I didn't really have the capacity to start a legal fight for it, since this was a side project, and I was the sole developer). What I had been told unofficially, even by departments that did agree to send data, was that publicizing the data was perceived to have possible negative consequences -- such as scaring off potential home buyers (this was during the housing bubble). My point is that crime has always been a big draw for local news organizations, and this includes data applications like crime maps. But even ignoring how it might distort public perception of crime, there was always a pretty implicit downside to a local publisher in making their own community look like a shithole. Not just the negative feelings, but the price of real estate (and those real estate advertisers). From what I can tell, Ring's proposed news service is just for Ring customers? That is, a non-Ring user (or someone not in the local geofenced area) might not get to see the crime news for a given area, in the same way that any Web user could visit a public crime mapper like chicagocrime.org. So the Ring news service gets all the upside of the attention that crime news draws without the same downsides that would usually be part of a publisher's news equation. This, added to Ring's already inherent appeal to customers paranoid about local crime, might lead to problematic incentives in their crime coverage. [0] http://www.holovaty.com/writing/chicagocrime.org-tribute/ http://www.holovaty.com/writing/chicagocrime.org-tribute/