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selfpublishingnews · 5 years

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An important story for self publishers of all kinds, books, websites, news, etc.

This article is from the Norwalk (Connecticut) Hour, a local newspaper.

With decades of experience as an investigative reporter, Chapman started NancyonNorwalk.com in 2010 together with her now-deceased husband and fellow journalist, Mark Chapman. The website, funded by local donors, is a nonprofit, self-published news site for and about the town of Norwalk, where Chapman resides.

For the past eight years, Chapman has covered issues important to the local community. In early 2018, for example, she broke the story that Norwalk’s finance department inadvertently transferred nearly $1 million to scammers. So, when Marc D’Amelio, a prominent local Republican, entered the race for the 25th District’s state Senate seat, Chapman was on the case.

Remembering D’Amelio from his 2017 run for Norwalk Board of Education, Chapman thought back to a story she read in the online Daily Voice about D’Amelio’s 2014 arrest record. According to the report, D’Amelio was driving under the influence (DUI), handing out casino winnings while his 9-year-old daughter (and three random men he picked up at a bodega) were also in the car.

Chapman considered D’Amelio’s DUI arrest newsworthy during his 2018 state Senate race, but noticed the Daily Voice article was no longer online. Like any good reporter, she then chased down a redacted copy of D’Amelio’s arrest record from the Norwalk Police Department.

Before publishing a story about the arrest, Chapman reached out to then-candidate D’Amelio for comment, and his response was to threaten litigation. D’Amelio said that because his arrest record was expunged, Chapman would be liable for defamation if she ran the story. She then conferred with counsel and went ahead with publishing an article about D’Amelio’s DUI arrest. She included his comments, as well as the fact that records of his arrest and conviction were expunged.

After losing the election this past November, D’Amelio sued, accusing Chapman of false light invasion of privacy and inflicting emotional distress.

The sheer cost of defending the case threatened to put Chapman, a local journalist running a nonprofit news site on a shoestring budget, out of business. Fortunately, a friend pointed her to Yale Law School’s Media Freedom and Information Access (MFIA) Clinic for help.

Read the complete article here at the Norwalk Hour website.

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