First Amendment Comment Newsletter

In this month’s edition of King & Ballow’s First Amendment Comment, a recent New Hampshire Supreme Court decision extending the reporters privilege to a website operator is explored. The high court of the Granite State concluded that a website operator was a member of the press and protected by the news gathering privilege.

Also, a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals involving a Texas case demonstrates that not all defamation lawsuits originate from the newsroom. In that case, a sales manager was successfully sued for urging his sales staff to make defamatory comments about their competition.

We also look at a decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court holding that the fair reporting privilege extends to initial pleadings in lawsuits, even when those pleadings suggest criminal wrongdoing, but no criminal charges are filed.

A very unusual case from Kansas originating out of the notorious Bind, Torture, Kill crime wave in Wichita demonstrates the unique nature of libel claims. While most lawsuits survive the death of the person filing suit, that is not generally true in defamation claims. Finally, although the media is frequently viewed with disfavor by jurors and therefore subject to high punitive damage awards, courts frequently reduce those high punitive damage awards. A recent case from Illinois demonstrates this principle.

College Media Advisers acquires Center for Innovation in College Media

Opportunities for college media advisers and their students to receive critical hands-on training in multimedia content production will expand this fall thanks to a recent organizational merger between two national journalism education associations.

College Media Advisers will take over ownership and operation of the Center for Innovation in College Media effective July 1, according to CMA President Sally Renaud. College Media Advisers is the largest and oldest higher education association serving the professionals who advise student newspapers, online media, radio, television and other publications on college and university campuses.

“This exciting acquisition will greatly enhance the ongoing evolution of CMA and the services it can offer,” Renaud said. “Thanks to the vision and energy of the CICM folks, our advisers and their students will be armed with the resources they need to be trained for media in this century.”

CICM serves as a resource to college journalists and their advisers by sharing information freely online and providing practical training in emerging media techniques at regional and national workshops. The Nashville based non-profit, launched in 2006, is best known for the thought-leading “Innovation in College Media” blog, its series of experiential workshops taught by renowned professional journalists and its annual online college media contest.

CMA Call for Papers – Louisville, Kentucky

CMA will sponsor a competitive, peer-reviewed research paper session at the fall convention in Louisville, Kentucky. The top paper will receive the Ken Nordin Award for CMA Research. It could also qualify to be published in College Media Review.

Papers are being solicited on all research topics related to college media. The research may be either qualitative or quantitative. Possible research areas include the following:

• Case studies of student media
• Analysis of student media coverage
• Audience analysis
• Pedagogy for student media coursework
• Converging media for student media
• Independence and student media
• Advisers’ roles
• Financial aspects of college media

Graduate students are also invited and encouraged to submit papers.

Deadline for submissions: July 1, 2010.

Authors will be notified by Aug. 1, 2010 if their papers have been accepted.

Papers should be submitted by email to vffilak@gmail.com

Please note: Papers should include a title page that has the author’s name, school and e-mail address. The subsequent pages should not have the author’s name in headers or footers to allow for blind review.

CMA Workshop, Poynter Training combine this summer on beach

NEW! Take a LOOK on VIDEO.

Registration is now open for the 2010 Summer Adviser Workshop (SAW) in St. Petersburg, July 11- 14, where the New Advisers Workshop and Advising Today’s College Media have been combined for the second summer to provide a greater and more efficient learning experience.

The objective of this training is to help advisers work through the obstacles facing college media today, including understanding media law and ethics, recruiting and training students, assessing budgets and ways to get the most for your program’s dollars, providing students with tools for their success and navigating the new media landscape.

Are you ready for summer?

By WARREN KOZIRESKI, President of College Broadcasters Inc.

The weeks are quickly counting down to the end of another semester and academic year. If you’re like most people, thoughts of summer are still a distant memory, but a few moments now can not only save you a lot of potential headaches next fall, but also propel your organization to new heights in the near future.

To help, here are a few thought starters:

A few words about money...

Hi Everyone: I am the CMA Treasurer and thought perhaps I should add a few comments about CMA’s finances.

At the Summer Board retreat and fall and spring convention board meetings, two things dominated the discussion:  how can we make the CMA organization better in the things that we do and the things that we offer our membership and how do we trim costs and run a much leaner organization at the same time.

We so appreciate your concerns and suggestions and ideas.  We have discussed many of these ideas, while keeping in mind all of our membership, including those who still want print copies and those that are ready to move to digital.  We have worked hard on the budget and trimmed and eliminated those things that are not essential.  We have considered our limited revenue sources and have seen the decline in convention attendance because of the budget issues at individual schools.  Of course, our sponsorships are extremely important and appreciated, and although we have seen some pullback, we continue to be grateful for those we have.

We try to be sensitive to all of the membership and take the ideas, suggestions and criticism into consideration in making our decisions.  We struggled at the New York board meeting with increasing the cost of membership, and in the end we felt we had found a modest compromise.

Duke squeezes by Butler for its 4th national championship

By Zina Kumok, IU Final Four News Bureau

During the 2010 Final Four, banners reading “The Road Ends Here” decorated Lucas Oil Stadium.

On a memorable Monday night in downtown Indianapolis, two teams came to the end of that road. Only one reached it happily, and that wasn’t the team from six miles away, the team that played amid the embrace and emotions of hometown fans.

Rather, the happy ending came for the school located in a different time zone.

Duke beat Butler 61-59 for its fourth national championship – its total as a university and under head coach Mike Krzyzewski.

The title wasn’t for the host city of Indianapolis that watched its local school lose in its first Final Four appearance.

It was for the Blue Devils.

It was for senior guard Jon Scheyer, who went 22-11 as a freshman and ended his collegiate career as the game’s most outstanding player.

It was for junior guard Nolan Smith, who added to the family legacy that began when his father — Derek Smith — won his own national championship with Louisville 30 years ago.

And it was for a coach overtook his mentor and added to his already-legendary collection.