Among the new content in your reformatted and redesigned Farmville Herald will be a more robust selection of public records: information that you, as citizens, are entitled to see under state law.

Beginning next week, we will publish the names of people who are arrested on felony and non-traffic misdemeanors by law enforcement agencies in Prince Edward, Buckingham and Cumberland counties.

Staff writer Jordan Miles has worked cooperatively with Prince Edward Sheriff Wesley Reed, Farmville Police Chief Curtis Davis, Buckingham Sheriff William G. “Billy” Kidd, Cumberland Sheriff Darrell Hodges and Longwood University Police Chief Bob Beach on developing a system for weekly publication. Even though these agencies are required by law to provide the information, they bent over backward to get us the lists in a format that makes it easier for us to process for print publication and get them to you timely and consistently. We’re also grateful to the staffs at these agencies who will gather and send the information to us each week.

All names provided to us — no matter how prominent or powerful the person arrested — will be published. If someone is arrested in our three-county readership area whose name is not published, it will mean that it was not provided to us. In extraordinary circumstances, we will delay publication at the request of a law enforcement agency if immediate publication would jeopardize a larger investigation. But even those names will be published eventually.

On a somewhat related note, we will continue to publish real estate transfers that occur in each of our localities. However, effective Aug. 1, we will no longer omit purchase prices upon request, as has been the practice in the past. Journalistic ethics require us to publish public records in their entirety or not at all. Purchase prices are public record under state law, therefore we will publish them along with the names of the buyer and seller and the magisterial (or land) district of the property.

Along with arrests, we will soon begin publishing court dispositions. It’s only fair that if we publish the name of someone who is arrested (and not yet found guilty), we publish the outcome of his case.

If there are other public records you’d like for us to publish on a regular basis, let us know with an email to editor@farmvilleherald.com, or call us at 392-4151.

STEVE STEWART is publisher of The Farmville Herald. His email address is steve.stewart@farmvilleherald.com.