I had a little bit of a confrontation. Call it a discussion, if you like.

For the past four weeks or so, I’ve been collecting information from daily police reports from the Peoria Police Department and including them in blotter reports I’ve been running on Blogger News Net. This online-only news organization operates at tellpeoria.com/news.

No big deal, I thought. The Journal Star does it. So do the radio and TV stations.

So the other day, I walk in and asked for the reports and plop myself down the media room and begin to gather the news. Well, the police officer who mans the front desk sticks his head into the room and starts asking questions. Basically, he thinks I’m just gathering police reports and putting them on my blog. He thinks this is wrong, a violation of the Freedom of Information Act.

I could have told him that putting police news on a blog is not a violation of any act. But, instead I told him that tellpeoria.com/news is a legitimate news organization. We run news reports from the Peoria City Council. We run news about transportation issues. We’ve covered news out of Springdale Cemetery. The possibilities are endless. There is going to be more, not less, news covered by Tell Peoria.

Why do this? Don’t we have a daily newspaper? Well, I think the Journal Star is kinda week on local news. Sorry, but I do. Most of it is, I am sure, due to downsizing.

So this is a legitimate news organization. What this is NOT is a print organization. But then, neither are WMBD, WEEK, WHOI or WCBU. The founders never envisioned radio or television when they wrote the 1st Amendment. And they wrote the 1st Amendment to give freedom of the press to people, not the corporation that own the mainstream media.

The police officer (whose name I did not get at the time) said he would look into it. I told him about all the online-only news organizations that has started up recently, like The Batavian, which reads like a good small-town community newspaper. AOL is stating this thing called Patch, which is trying to put online-only news sites in suburban communities all over America.

So, folks, Blogger News Net is a legitimate news organization. Please don’t try to take away my right to cover the news. I don’t think you can get away with it, but I’d really like to avoid the argument.

To anyone concerned: Look at the sites I have listed. You’ll see Blogger News Net is just news is a blog format. Call me at 309.340.3906 if you have any questions. I’m still working the kinks out, but I’ll explain it all to you.