Re the strange story below, Atrios commenters point out something I should have -- how cool it is that the Haywood County News (which seems to be part of the Asheville Citizen-Times empire) is posting PDFs of source documents as part of its news coverage -- and something I wondered about, which is the NC statute on voluntary vs. involuntary castration.

Comments

[David Boyd]

Any chance this is the greatest April Fool's joke of all time?

[jsykes]

Ed:

I've been posting pdf source documents at the Reidsville Free Press since January. It is pretty cool, eh?

[Randall]

It would be great if more papers were able to get documents from departments and post them so quickly, but sometimes it is not possible.

As a reporter who has covered the crime beats in several different counties and municipalities, it should be noted not all police departments are willing to share such documents. As such, it's not always easy to get them.

Sure there are "sunshine" laws in our state that require them to turn over these documents eventually (if reporters are even aware of them), but they are not always turned over in a timely fashion.

[Lex]

Randall is correct. Even among local agencies, who are generally pretty cooperative in this regard, we occasionally run into problems getting documents in timely fashion. Good for the C-T for making the effort and having it pay off.