NYT column: Shrinking Newsrooms Wage Fewer Battles for Public Access to Courtrooms [View All]

[Heidi]

Published: August 31, 2009

You don’t see newspapers fighting to open court proceedings the way they used to, and people are starting to notice.

“The days of powerful newspapers with ample legal budgets appear to be numbered,” a public defender in Georgia, Gerard Kleinrock, wrote in a recent Supreme Court brief. “Will underfunded bloggers be able to carry the financial burdens of opening our courtrooms?”

The brief concerned the case of Eric Presley, a Georgia man convicted of cocaine trafficking. The judge closed the courtroom during jury selection in Mr. Presley’s case, on the theory that it was too small to accommodate both potential jurors and the public. Citing the public’s lack of access to the jury selection, Mr. Presley appealed, and the Supreme Court will soon consider whether to hear his case.

Thanks to The Press-Enterprise, a newspaper in Riverside, Calif., the press and the public have nearly an absolute constitutional right to attend jury selection in criminal cases. In the 1980s, the paper fought ferociously to establish that principle, taking two access cases to the Supreme Court.

News organizations used to consider those kinds of lawsuits a matter of civic responsibility.

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