Local

Danville’s historical society is working to share a comprehensive history of the city

Today, if you’re interested in Danville’s tobacco legacy, its civil rights movement, its Native American history, the rise and fall of Dan River Mills, or even baseball cards, you can walk into the Danville Historical Society at 406 Cabell St. and ask. Executive Director Robin Marcato or archivists Joe Scott and Cody Foster can show you a particular photograph, document or artifact you’d like to see. That would’ve been impossible last year. The historical society didn’t have a physical location with public hours until 2022. Instead, the organization’s archives were stored in dozens of boxes, piled up in the Main Street Methodist Church. The collection was almost entirely unavailable to the public, Marcato said.

cardinalnews.org

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Statewide

Questions remain after Virginia Press Association investigates award winner 

The Cadet is funded by a nonprofit run by VMI alumnus Bob Morris, who has sued the school twice over contracts involving its DEI training. The Cadet’s winning entry included coverage of one of those lawsuits but did not disclose that Morris was behind those efforts, the Cardinal News reported. Morris has also allegedly written stories for The Cadet and runs its social media accounts, Inside Higher Ed reported last year based on an interview with an anonymous student working at the paper. Morris, who did not respond to a request for comment, has said that he merely serves as an adviser to students. In addition to failing to disclose Morris’ involvement with the paper, The Cadet’s article about the lawsuit includes lines that are nearly identical to a separate press release from Protect Honor, an alumni group that has opposed DEI efforts at the school, The Washington Post found. The article does not cite the press release. Only five of the 15 articles submitted for the contest include bylines by Cadet staff writers. The other 10 articles include a letter to the editor by an alumnus, several anonymous opinion pieces, and articles that are credited to “The Cadet Editorial Staff.” One article contains the byline “jewish-history.com” and is almost entirely a reprint.

poynter.org

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In other states

AG Griffin says FOIA law needs to modernize

Pointing to a need for privacy in sensitive situations, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said Sunday (July 2) the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) needs to change to adapt to modern times. “One thing I want to mention that really is driving a lot of my interest here was the ransomware issue with Little Rock School District. The Little Rock School District was a victim of a ransomware [attack]. And the way the FOIA law is currently written, they have to discuss their strategy on dealing with ransomware in public. That’s ridiculous,” Griffin said. “That’s like asking the U.S. Army to strategize and plan a battle in public… We’ve got to change that.” Griffin has received pushback from organizations, individuals and media groups for considering changes to FOIA. He was also criticized for not opening up his advisory group for public meetings. When asked if he might consider holding public hearings or meetings with this advisory group in addition to private meetings, Griffin indicated it would be unlikely. “I meet in private in my office all day, every day. This is not a reality show. I literally, literally have hundreds, if not thousands, of meetings every year. And, they’re not public. The law doesn’t require they be public. The law doesn’t contemplate that they be public,” he said.

talkbusiness.net

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In other states

She vanished 50 ago — and her family is suing the NYPD for answers

A Queens woman was 22 years old and pregnant when she disappeared nearly 50 years ago — but her family is still desperate for answers. Milagros Perez Peralta was leaving an unemployment office in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Aug. 30, 1976 when witnesses claimed she was forced into a car, according to Manhattan Supreme Court papers filed by her brother, Rafael Perez. Her family immediately contacted the cops in the nearby 90th Precinct, and in the 114th where she lived, Perez said. Despite an investigation at the time, Peralta’s case went cold, said her brother, who filed a Freedom of Information Law request with the NYPD in April 2022 for any documents on his sister’s case. But after nine months, the NYPD allegedly closed Perez’ FOIL request, claiming without explanation it had no documents about the case, he contends.

nypost.com

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Federal

Biden Rules Tighten Limits on Drone Strikes

U.S. military and CIA drone operators generally must obtain advance permission from President Joe Biden to target a suspected militant outside a conventional war zone, and they must have “near certainty” at the moment of any strike that civilians will not be injured, newly declassified rules show. The 15-page rules, signed by Biden in October, also limit such drone strikes to situations in which the operators deem “infeasible” any option of capturing the targeted person alive in a commando raid. And if national security officials propose targeting any American, it prompts a more extensive review. The rules tightened constraints on drone strikes and commando raids that President Donald Trump had loosened in 2017. The Biden administration partly declassified and disclosed the document, along with an 18-page national security memo laying out its international counterterrorism strategy, after The New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

nytimes.com

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Public Data

A Young Civic Hacker Explores the Possibilities of Public Data

It has the makings of a “kid in a candy store” moment. The kid in this case is 14-year-old Elias Fretwell who lives in a town called Lafayette in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. The candy store is made up of the 255,065 data sets posted on the federal open government website, data.gov. “It’s fun looking for things and imagining what could be done with it,” Elias said. His excitement piques when he finds something he can improve upon in that vast universe of uneven, sometimes random data. And there is an unequaled thrill when a big, faceless bureaucracy responds to one of his submitted issues or, better yet, acknowledges his contributions. Elias’ first hacks involved Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data about state vaccination rates in the early days of COVID-19. His dad, co-founder and CEO of the local government digital platform ProudCity, Luke Fretwell, introduced him to APIs. “So then I went and I looked it up,” Elias said, “and I figured out how to do it. Then I wanted to find something that was interesting and build something with it.” Elias coded, Luke handled the web design and the father-son civic coding team launched its first hacking project early in the pandemic. The project morphed over time into a hoverable map of weekly cases across the United States based on the CDC’s National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System API.

governing.com

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