We came up with a formula that ensures our selection is completely random. 'How we choose everything - this is what's unique about how we do things. Ward says his selection process is run by a proprietary formula he'd only reveal if I signed a nondisclosure agreement - I declined. 'We don't try to choose by any particular crime or any other nationality or anything like that.' Of course, he said, 'If someone looks a little more interesting, they're gonna get on the front page.' Whether or not your mug shot ends up in Charged is 'completely random,' Chief said. Chief says he's got 200 locations selling Charged around Dallas, each of which is hard-won turf claimed by his local sales rep's door-to-door efforts. Ward told us his print run this week is 12,000 papers, which he'll sell in gas stations and convenience stores, including 32 franchised 7-Elevens. Chief says Charged crams in more mug shots than his competition each week, anywhere from 275 to 300. Who knows if those nuances really register for a guy who's passing up the latest Auto Trader to splurge on a one-dollar set of mug shots. Charged runs one page of 'Most Wanted' mugs each week, but Mugly! takes even more of a public service bent, running 'Most Wanted' photos, missing children and restaurant health inspection scores. Mugly! includes a 'Whodunit' game, where you're given a list of criminal charges to match with a set of unmarked mug shots. 'We try to bring a little bit of humor to it,' Chief said. Beast' for some of the choicest mug shots in the paper.

Charged flexes its design muscle with multi-colored novelty fonts in sections like 'Clownin' and Frownin'' and 'Beauty vs. Chief told us he has no idea what Ward was talking about.Īs for the papers, Ward said, 'We have a completely different approach than he does.' Both papers run short articles with the mug shots.

'It's like he's got something to hide, or something,' Ward said. I'll let him speak ill of me and i'll be the better man,' Ward said this morning, moments before calling Chief a 'pirate' and maintaining his competitor's real name is actually Trombley, not Chief. In this rough young corner of the publishing world, personal rivalry like this one just comes with the turf.

So now, nobody in Dallas gets Busted !, and each week Charged and Mugly! slug it out for gas stations' newsrack space. Chief confirmed he received the letter, but says he was publishing under the Busted name in Florida back in August 2008 - nine months before Ward began his Austin paper - and he's 'in the process of filing a wrongful trademark' complaint against Ward. There was confusion in the marketplace.' But, he said, there's also this: 'We have a product named Busted! as well as the federal trademark.' Ward says he sent Chief a cease-and-desist letter once Chief's Busted! began publishing here in Dallas. Martin Ward, who told us, 'OK, that's one way of putting it. Then we got a call back from Mugly! publisher J. Plus, the new name helps 'make clear to the public that we want to portray these individuals as innocent until proven guilty.' People were confusing his paper with the Austin mug mag Busted!, which is published by the guys who sell Mugly! in Dallas. First off, he told me, even though he's got seven local editions of Busted around the country - his phone recording calls it 'America's largest weekly crime fighting publication' - the Dallas edition is now called Charged, and has been for the last two weeks. I've been trying to reach Busted's Ryan Chief to learn more about the shame rag business around here, and finally caught up with him this morning. Avid mug-shot magazine readers (or picture-lookers) will have noticed some changes in that sliver of the media landscape since our first mention of Busted and Mugly! earlier this month.

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