stock court docket justice

Alert readers of the Blue Mountain Eagle will have noticed that we’ve been tinkering with our public safety coverage and the way we present it on our website. 

Traditionally, the Eagle published a lengthy roundup of 911 dispatch calls and legal judgments from the circuit and justice courts, along with a summary of activity by the sheriff’s office. 

Sadly, when we joined forces with five other Northeastern Oregon newspapers as the East Oregonian, there simply wasn’t room to get all that traditional “police blotter” information from six counties into a single joint print edition.

But that decision also gave us the opportunity to rethink how we present that kind of information online — and we think we’ve come up with a better way to do it. 

Because dispatch information is available on a daily basis, we’ve started putting that up on our website five days a week under a new name: Public Safety Log. The Monday edition includes calls for service that happened over the weekend, and we’ll add the weekly roundup of sheriff’s office activity when it comes to us.

Circuit Court judgments come out at irregular intervals, depending on the court docket. We will write those up as they come in and post them online under the heading Court Docket. Cases that merit extra attention will be written up and posted separately under their own headlines.

After due consideration, we’ve decided to stop publishing a roundup of Justice Court judgments. These tend to involve relatively low-level offenses — primarily traffic violations, breaches of fish and game law and so on. We know some readers will miss this feature, but we’re guessing people who’ve received a speeding ticket or got popped for driving without insurance will not.

On the whole, we’re betting most readers will be happy with our new approach. The Public Safety Log will present timely information about the actions of Grant County’s law enforcement, fire and emergency medical professionals, and Court Docket will keep you updated on the outcome of criminal misdemeanor and felony cases. 

This is still a work in progress, and we will continue to tinker with our new approach going forward. Feel free to drop me a line at editor@bmeagle.com if you have a suggestion for how we could do it better.

———

Your digital subscription access has been expanded to include the East Oregonian, La Grande Observer, Hermiston Herald, Baker City Herald, Wallowa County Chieftain, and Blue Mountain Eagle.

For all digital access:

• Register your account on every site you wish to read with the same email address and password you currently use.

• Once you’ve registered, enter your username and password to enjoy the full range of content on that news site.

• You should not have to log in again unless you log out, clear history or experience software updates.

• Save your password when prompted by your browser and if you are inadvertently logged out, your browser can fill in your login and password for you. (Only use this option on your personal digital devices.)

To view the latest e-Editions, be sure to register your account and sign in to www.eastoregonian.com.

Sign up for e-newsletters from each website by going to the “Email lists” link on your account dashboard for each site.

Thank you for supporting local journalists in Eastern Oregon.

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us at 800-781-3214 or email support@eomediagroup.com.

———

As always, if you have comments or questions about the Blue Mountain Eagle, or if you want to pass along a story idea, send an email to me at editor@bmeagle.com. 

And, as I’ve said before, my heartfelt thanks to our subscribers: We simply would be unable to do this vital work without your support.

Bennett Hall is the editor of the Blue Mountain Eagle.