A blogger upset with a New York newspaper’s decision to publish an interactive map of local gun permit holders has returned the favor by posting the names and addresses of nearly every employee at the publication.
Blogger Christopher Fountain on For What It’s Worth published names, home address and email contact information for Journal News editor Cyndee Royle, publisher Janet Hasson and reporter Dwight Worley, who wrote an article on Sunday to accompany the map that led to widespread criticism aimed at the Lower Hudson Valley newspaper.
"Miss Royle’s married name is Lambert,” Fountain wrote. “She lives in White Plains and here is her Facebook page complete with pictures of her and her kids. Hello Sanctimony.”
Fountain also displayed contact information for Robert Rodriguez, the “visual editor” responsible for the map itself, as well as many other employees.
Fountain, who did not return calls seeking comment, told CNN he was offended by the newspaper’s “conflating legal gun owners with some crazed tormented devil up in Newtown” and wondered how its employees would handle the same treatment.
Fountain said he has since received emails from “abused women” who were under protective order.
“They’re terribly afraid that now their names and addresses are all over the Internet and accessible through that map,” he told CNN.
The Journal News, meanwhile, has defended publication of the database, which was legally obtained from the County Clerks’ Offices through a Freedom of Information Act request made after the shootings in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 children and eight adults dead.
“New York residents have the right to own guns with a permit and they also have a right to access public information,” Hasson, president and publisher of The Journal News Media Group, was quoted as saying in a subsequent story in the newspaper.
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