A memo I wrote to the St. Petersburg Times on Sept. 4, 2009

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* This is a memo I wrote and emailed to the St. Petersburg Times staff *
* about a month after starting as a full-timer. It didn't go anywhere, *
* but I still think it was a neato idea and you should all steal it.   *
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Hey all, Andy Boyle here, your friendly neighborhood news technologist.
This is going to be a long e-mail, so bear with me.

I am working on an in-house application that will try and make our
reporting jobs a bit easier. I'm working on a site that will help us
hopefully not get blindsided by a random arrest of a high profile person
ever again. What I want to build is a tool that scrapes through everyone
arrested in our coverage area (via our mugshots.tampabay.com Web site) and
check if any notables pop up.

Say, for instance, if Pinellas County Commissioner John Q. Public gets
arrested for a DUI, it would notify us as soon as that person is arrested.

There have been a few instances in recent weeks where public figures have
been arrested and we didn't find out until a bit later. So what I'm asking
you for is a list of people you would want to know about if they got
arrested.

What I am sending you is a Excel spreadsheet I'd like you to fill out.
Think of all of the people who are important on your beat -- city council
members, county commissioners, CEOs of big businesses, coaches of high
school football teams, police chiefs and sheriffs -- and then fill this out
with whatever information you can. Even if you do more long-term or
investigative work, and just want to be notified if a few random folks get
arrested, that's fine, too (or maybe if you want to know if someone you did
a profile on a long time ago gets arrested, feel free to add them).

The main fields I need from you are First Name, Other First Name (if the
person is really William but goes by Bill, or has a nickname or something)
Last Name, Position (this can mean county sheriff, running back, CEO,
whatever they do in their organization), Where They Work, and include your
e-mail in the Reporter's E-mail field. If possible, it would be great to
get the DOB (Date of Birth), home address, contact info (e-mail and/or
phone number), and a short bio.

Date of birth is very important, so if you can include that, you would get
a lot more positive catches as opposed to people you’d have to
double-check. While it might not be possible to get everyone’s DOB (and I
don’t want you to have to call sources and ask them, so if you have that
info on a rolodex or somewhere else, just use that), I would love for an
effort to be made to include ones on people you consider the most vital. I
am also all for helping you find DOBs, too.

As you can see, I filled out an example in the Excel file using my name.
I'd prefer you keep the format the same, capitalize names, all that jazz.
That way it'll be easier for me to input the data.

I'll try not to get too technical, but the goal is to try and match names
(and hopefully dates of birth) with those who get arrested, and then the
program would shoot you an e-mail saying something like:

A person named CHUCK (CHARLES) MCGILL was arrested SEPT. 12, 2009, at 1:39
a.m., for DUI AND POSSESSION OF A ROCKET LAUNCHER. He has the same birthday
-- 10-3-1945 -- of the COUNTY COMMISSIONER of HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY with the
same name. His phone number is 813.444.9999 and his e-mail is
i_love_rocket_launchers_and_booze@aol.com

Something like that. So then you can double-check that information, see if
it is indeed County Commish Chuck McGill, and we can beat the other news
outlets about his drunken driving fetish that involves rocket launchers.
Also, I can set this up so on weekend shifts/night shifts certain
editors/reporters will get all e-mails (if any), just in case someone
important on another beat gets arrested while you're off work/on
vacation/etc.

For those of you who cover sports teams, tell me where I might be able to
find rosters that list DOBs and I can probably import that for you. But I
will need coaches, front desk staff, important university donors, etc.,
from you all. For high school coaches, another application we are currently
working on will list those, so I might just take it from that list.

For those who cover county/city government/education/whatever, I'm looking
more for the constitutional officers, their top officials, county
commissioners, mayors, heads of any important boards that deal with lots of
money, etc. Civic leaders, school board members, whatever you want on here.

For those of you who cover other areas, including the arts, I'm looking for
"famous" people -- movie stars, well-known musicians, etc., people who live
in the Tampa Bay area (or even the conductor of the symphony or head of a
local arts foundation), and whose arrest we would want to know about.

This application will also allow us to add/subtract people in the future,
so if you fill this out and miss somebody, just send me the information you
want added in and I can do that after the fact.

I know we're all very busy people, but if you could get this to me by next
week, I'd appreciate it. Shoot me an e-mail if you have any questions.
Thanks for your help -- and hopefully this will help you.