You will recall that the Arpaio/Thomas debacle started because the New Times printed Sheriff Joe's home address. Not to be outdone, the Republic printed Andy Thomas's address on AzCentral and then channel 12 broadcast the link.
Here's how the Republic covered the story.
Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas lashed out at the media Tuesday after a TV reporter published an online link to public documents that listed Thomas' home address and the names of his wife and children.
On Monday evening, a Channel 12 (KPNX) reporter published the link in a story on azcentral.com, the Web site shared by Channel 12 and The Arizona Republic. The link and the story were removed Tuesday afternoon as soon as Republic editors became aware of Thomas' concerns.
Since the newspaper guys have finally figured out how to do basic internet searches, and since they think it's so funny to print the home addresses of elected officials, I thought you might want to know where some of the Republic Top Brass live.
First, let me say that it must pay a heck of a lot better to be a publisher than a prosecutor. Here's a nice view of Republic Publisher John Zidich's house. Wow, 5 baths and 4,080 square feet. Don't worry, he probably offsets his massive carbon footprint by paying to have trees planted in Bolivia.
Republic Editor and Vice President of News, Ward Bushee is quoted in the article. Bellow is a shot of his house. Golly, if I had been working in the newsroom for 20 years and was finally making $60K, I'd probably be pretty ticked off to see that both of these guys live in million dollar homes in Ancala.
UPDATE: A friend of mine sent me an email pointing out that Zidich and Bushee are nice guys and they probably don't keep track of the day-to-day details enough to know about Thomas' address being printed. So why should I print their addresses?
Here's my response.
Newspapers are like dentists. They are so used to inflicting pain that they can get a bit careless. It's important for a dentist to have an occasional root canal. I was in the legislature during the 1991 redistricting and the Sunday Republic printed a full double page fold out map of metro Phoenix and included little flags where all the legislators lived. It printed our addresses in the side bar. That was a decade before Google earth and the paper didn't seem to understand that I might not appreciate my home address being printed in 500,000 papers.
It's worse in Thomas' case. Printing Thomas' address was a spite move on the Republic's part. New Times printed Arpaio's address as part of a feud and Thomas reacted badly, so the Republic printed Thomas' address in order to poke him in the eye. The paper claims that they just wanted to show how easy it is to find this information on the net. Give me a break, if that was their point, they should have printed Zidich and Bushee's information, not Thomas'.
The paper is cavalier about the address issue specifically, and the privacy issue generally. Printing Zidich and Bushee's readily-available information is a good way to give them a basic understanding of how it feels to be exposed. Maybe they think twice before they do it again.
Good Job! Maybe you could ad the Pres. of KPNX to complete the trio. The kicker in the whole thing is Arizona has a redaction law, law enforcement officers, prosecutors, etc may have their public information redacted in order to prevent these type of things. You know when someone wants to hurt you because of your job and where the public availability of such information could be dangerous. Check out this link for more info:
http://www.ananews.com/legalert/07/v14n12_2007.htm
The Arizona Newspaper Association printed an article about it this session when the current law was expanded. The Republic/KPNX knew exactly what they were doing and did it anyway!
This is just as outrageous and an improper use of power as anything Arpaio has done.
Posted by: Ann | October 24, 2007 at 01:40 AM
Hey Greg, I'm a proud liberal Democrat and I agree with your point here. Its not "funny" to go around printing people's addresses when they are a public figure. There are a lot of crazy mofos out there and honestly, they really arn't smart enough to do what you did, but when you HAND them the information, they can be a time bomb waiting to explode.
BUT, i think what the New Times did with the Sheriff was fair game. The Sheriff has been flaunting the law for some time now and the point of the story the New Times ran was to prove a point about the Sheriff's land deals. Not to "Get back" at the Sheriff of which the Sheriff immediately inferred, the crazy bastard.
But posting Thomas's house where his wife and children sleep is childish and dangerous and Channel 12 should be ashamed.
Posted by: Darryl Light | October 24, 2007 at 01:46 AM
I am with Greg on this one in the sense that these articles or reports should not focus their energy on exposing addresses of public officials. The concerns in the past are about properties Arpaio owns.
Thomas deserves to be judged on his policy record, not his address and those determinations need to be made on the ballot and no place else.
Posted by: Aaron | October 24, 2007 at 02:59 AM
"The article by 12 News reporter Brahm Resnik did not actually give Thomas' address. Instead, in the context of the bigger debate of the New Times case, it showed that Arpaio's address, and those of other elected officials, are easily obtained from government Web sites. He linked the story to documents that Arpaio and Thomas filed with the county."
Nothing was done wrong. It was merely to express how this case was bull. Now Thomas is looking for any cover he can to save his gubernatorial bid.
Posted by: Atticus | October 24, 2007 at 03:44 AM
While I am so tired of this story, what really kills me is that The Arizona Republic bent to Candy's wishes. He didn't like the story. He didn't like that the route to find his information was presented to the masses. So he called THE PAPER OF RECORD for our state and had it removed. What is going on here?
Posted by: TEY | October 24, 2007 at 05:28 AM
In fairness to Zidich, he only purchased his home for $870,000 in 2001 (according to County records), so the $1.3 mil is a little inflated!
http://www.maricopa.gov/Assessor/ParcelApplication/Detail.aspx?ID=217-21-294
Posted by: Blue Lobster | October 24, 2007 at 06:47 AM
I know I couldn't have affored a house for $370,000 in 2001!
So - he either:
1. Made some really good stock investments, or
2. Inherited some money, or
3. Married into some money, or
4 likes big mortgage payments.
Posted by: ron | October 24, 2007 at 10:17 AM
Publisher and Editor positions at a major paper pay well, so it's not surprising that these guys are living in big houses.
What's surprising is that they get paid so well, and keep their jobs, when they're screwing up so badly.
Posted by: BobH | October 24, 2007 at 10:35 AM
These two men run businesses that employ hundreds of people. Is it surprising that they make, I'm guessing, several hundred thousand a year?
Posted by: Blue Lobster | October 24, 2007 at 10:40 AM
This is the link to 12 news email; also their advertisers are prominently displayed on their web site.
http://www.azcentral.com/12news/contact/12contact12_index.php
Posted by: Ann | October 24, 2007 at 05:56 PM
Greg, obviously you and I chose the wrong careers since we don't live in houses like this. :)
Posted by: ron | October 24, 2007 at 09:40 PM
Spot the bias.
Channel 12, which uses azcentral.com as its home site, does a story that gives links to records that show Andrew Thomas' home address. It posts that story on the Web site.
Thomas objects. The Arizona Republic, owner of the web site, agrees with Thomas' point and takes Channel 12's story down.
In response, the Espresso Pundit posts the addresses and photos of the homes of two top Republic executives -- the people who removed the story -- but does nothing about Channel 12 -- the people who posted the story. His personal dittoheads heartily agree with this tactic.
Posted by: jdleslie1 | October 25, 2007 at 01:18 AM
This is a great site you have here. I heard about your site on the radio yesterday on my way home from work and had to check it out. I love it. Please add more addresses to your blog. This is great. I like your frankness and the way you have of writing about events and politics on here. How refreshing. Very interesting. Keep up the good work. I'm your newest fan!
Posted by: Dunderhead | October 25, 2007 at 03:39 PM
What is Sheriff Joe and Thomas' mailing addresses? I'd like to mail them a letter of support on this matter. They are awesome in their jobs in our city and I'm proud to live here with them in office. Sheriff Joe rocks!
Posted by: Dunderhead | October 25, 2007 at 03:41 PM
Do you think Zidich and Bushee have anything to do with this situation? You shouldn't be able to do this he wasn't the one to put Thomas's address mon the web. By the way its bigger than 4080!
Posted by: unknown | October 26, 2007 at 11:25 PM
I am coming a little to this party.
Your bias is showing. The addresses weren't posted by Republic employees, they were posted by KPNX worker bees. They are two separate entities with the same corporate ownership. In fact Republic managers took the info off the web site (or had it taken off). For your criticism to be valid you should post the home info of the KPNX GM and news director. But the truth may get in the way of your agenda.
Posted by: cathy | October 28, 2007 at 01:14 PM
Exactly right, Cathy. And he continues to perpetuate his agenda with his update. He continues to say the Republic printed this, when it was Channel 12. The Republic took the posting down. So Greg's post here isn't merely reminding the dentist that it's painful, it's his own version of spite. The fact that Channel 12 should be the target does indeed get in the way of his agenda.
Posted by: jdleslie1 | October 28, 2007 at 02:55 PM
Are you sure that house is in Scottsdale? I saw its double across the street from the Hermosa Inn. I thought it was going to become a car showroom. Yhe glass circular section in the front is perfect for showing off the latest auto
Posted by: elinor stickney | March 26, 2008 at 04:12 PM