I'm puzzled. If the crime was committed in October, 2011 and the alleged perpetrators were caught on-site that very day, why is this article being printed now, eleven months later? Is this old news, or is there a new element that is not mentioned in the article?

I ask because crime news makes readers uneasy about their safety. If the news is current and accurate that uneasiness may serve a purpose. But if the news is old, this dis-ease serves disrupts our sense of community unnecessarily and is harmful.

The suspected crime happened last October, but they were just charged on Tuesday, as stated in the article, and that's when the police released the mug shots. A suspected crime isn't made public until someone is charged.

A second comment about whether crime articles are current or old news: In the "In The Article" group of links to related items (presented to the right of the main article), there are three links to articles reporting other crimes. None of these is current. The dates of the covered events were Nov., 2011, and June and July of this year.

The source links don't list the dates of the events, so there is no way way to note theses crimes are long past unless the reader actually navigates to the linked articles. Again the impression given is that there is a lot of crime going on all around us right now. This unfairly casts a negative impression of Maplewood,

As a simple matter of clarity, links to articles reporting specific events should clearly state the date the event occurred. This will offer readers an important perspective.

Jon– How "current" does something need to be, to be considered worth clicking on? I'd argue that if a suspected crime happened within the last year it's worth knowing about.