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"malicious" is the key word here. It's a common distinction used in many Australian laws meaning if you are prosecuted they need to build a case that you were not doing so for a legitimate useful reason like a phone book and knew it would cause harm. A unsurprisingly difficult task. This also gives you a fairly robust method of defence against any frivolous prosecution.

Phone books were sanitized. City directories would list occupations and they would be by area/address, so you could find neighbors.

Also, newspapers would report on the doings of ordinary people, not just the society pages, e.g. "John Smith was in town today from Peoria, visiting friends for three days."

In UK reporting it's still normal to include the street name of convicted criminals.

Mr Smith of Agraria Road Guildford was today sentenced to 3 years in prison for...

What a profoundly dishonest comparison.

There has to be an attached harm and apparent intent.