NYT column: Shrinking Newsrooms Wage Fewer Battles for Public Access to Courtrooms

[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.

Read more

[Heidi]

1. Kick. How're bloggers gonna fill this important gap with newspapers failing financially?

:kick:

[TexasObserver]

2. Recommend ... because this is a serious problem.

The public interest TV news theme is long gone. It's selling stuff, same as the other programming. Newspapers are getting their butts kicked. It's clear they no longer do research. They barely proof their work.

It's going to require the intertubes and our endless researchers to ferret out the facts.

[Heidi]

3. Oh, the stories I could tell.

It's not the reporters' fault, I promise you with my whole heart, as a former reporter, photographer, news editor, managing editor and publisher. Newsroom leadership sucks, on the whole. Print reporters, and especially reporters for smaller community newspapers, have very few advocates and very little real incentive to be tenacious.

[TexasObserver]

4. True. It's a business to sell advertising, and advertisers have clout.

What are the odds news shows will take a close look at the drugs which sponsor them?

[Missy Vixen]

5. Firedoglake.com had more "boots on the ground" during the Libby trial

than any MSM outlet. Even scarier, they were running an informal tutorial with several of the reporters from household name newspapers on the specifics of the trial. The traditional media didn't know and hadn't educated themselves on the specifics.

This still amazes me.