They had newsworthy value, as state’s evidence in a case of shocking child abuse, but they were also haunting images that the child could not have fought back against.

You can read the resulting story and my boss’s official comment here. I only realized what had just transpired after the management decided to post a explanation of their actions. Dear Newhouse School, here is a new case study.

Here are three photos taken as part of my ongoing experiments with photography. They are taken on an iPhone photo app called CameraBag using a setting called “Helga.” I call them, photos from a scarry place: women’s shoe section.

With his white monogrammed oxford and western-Kentucky accent, Wynn Radford in every way looks the part of the southern businessman. Selling insurance, however, isn’t his only venture. Radford is also a modern day community organizer as sole sponsor and contributor to hopkinsvillehowto.com, a repository for public information.

Radford says his website is not an attempt to save the world, but simply a product of his frustration with a lack of communication between people in his “Hoptown” home. “it is an attempt to level the playing field… A forum to share information,” he says.

As an insurance man Radford is clearly experienced in the art of the sale, but he is still having trouble driving users to his site. Most web businesses in their infancy face a similar problem, but hopkinsvillehowto.com is facing down a perfect storm. In a town where a family’s median income is only $36k, and per capita is only $16k, many young families targeted by the site may not have computers at home.

Still, Radford is determined. He believes that any community owes its citizens information about programs available to them. For example, the local Rotary club’s massive scholarship fund that will send any local high school graduate to the community college. Before his site, Radford says, that information was held by a select few and was difficult to access. One section on the site that he seems particularly passionate about is providing an educational road map.

Radford’s site seems like a project in democratizing information. He claims that if he can make it work in Hoptown “it can work somewhere else.”

3 years after his launch date, it is an uphill battle, but Radford is not the give-up kind.