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Fallout from the Marion, Kansas Newspaper Raid
In August 2023, local police raided the office of the Marion County Record newspaper and the homes of the reporters, supposedly in search of evidence that reporters had illegally accessed a state database looking for DUI records of a local coffee shop owner. @kedavis asked me for an update in a comment, but I decided to do a longer post instead.
The editor/owner of the newspaper, Eric Meyer, grew up in Marion, and his family has run the Record for decades. Before returning home to run the local paper, he had been editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and taught journalism at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, so he has national connections. Thus, the story went viral within hours.
Proximate Cause. A local restaurateur had been driving without a license for years due to DUI convictions, with the acquiescence of the local police department. She applied for a liquor license for her restaurant but was denied because of her DUIs. The newspaper investigated and learned (from her ex-husband) that the police had been letting her drive illegally. She was buddies with the new police chief, so she went to the chief and told him that the newspaper had illegally hacked into the state database to get her DUI records. The newspaper says that the database is public and that they didn’t hack anything. (Yes, it really is that petty.)