Update: State Licensing Board “Censors” GIS Article

Update 7/2/08: See comment below from PS Editor Tom Gibson for the further details.

——Original post 6/30/08———-

Back when I read more print magazines, I always relished the editorials. Wow, I thought, a whole page for the editor to tell you what was on his or her mind. My favorite editorial writers back then where Roopinder Tara at Cadence (who I wrote for at that publication, then worked for at Tenlinks.com) and the then editor of Backpacker, I don’t recall his name. Today I still make it a point to read the editorials in print publication in geospatial and related industries.

It’s in one of those, Tom Gibson’s “editor’s desk” (sic) column in Professional Surveyor  (July 2008, page 4, not online yet) that I found this statement:

In assembling this issue, we had one company withdraw a feature story because a state licensing board was concerned it depicted GIS practitioners as doing work surveyors should be doing, saying they should be licensed as surveyors to do it.

That prompted a few responses from me:
(1) I wonder how the state licensing board had a chance to read the article.
(2) Does preventing such articles to be published limit instead of encouraging discussion on the matter?
(3) Should Directions Media (and other geopublishers formal and informal) be prepared to deal with this issue? Will we be receiving “take down” notices regarding articles that include descriptions of such work in alleged violation of state laws?

Disclosure:  I used to work for the company that publishes Professional Surveyor.