As is often the case, some of the most interesting discussions at conferences and symposia take place away from the main panels, and for me, the same happened at
the Symposium on Reputation Economies in Cyberspace. During lunch I found about the Knight Foundation grant to Yale Law School to ‘Train the
Next Generation's Leading Legal Journalists’. While the grant was announced last May, this was the first I heard of it, and was pleased to get more details.

Some of the goals of the program are to study law and media, to promote interactions between lawyers and journalists, to provide opportunities for journalists to teach at Yale Law and to prepare law students for careers in media.

Various people bandied around ideas about things this program could do, with much of the focus centering on citizen journalists. “Can media law be simplified to help citizen journalism?” Could the Law and Media project create something similar for media issues to what Chilling Effects does for intellectual property issues? That sounds like an interesting project.

Another question of interest was “How do you understand shield laws for citizen journalists?” Some people have argued against shield laws at all, suggesting that in these days of citizen journalism, everyone is a journalist, and does it make sense to shield everyone?

This tied nicely into the topic of the day, Reputation Economies. What makes someone a citizen journalist? What role does ones reputation play in this? The registration form for the symposium requested that journalists provide certification that they are journalists. What sort of certification do bloggers have? You can look at the number of incoming links, as measured by a site like Technorati. However, these links can be gamed. You can look at Google’s PageRank, yet as people who participate in various paid blogging services found recently, this number is somewhat arbitrary and not necessarily reliable. You can look at traffic counts from sites like Alexa, Compete, or Quantcast. These ratings can also be gamed to greater or lesser extents. You can look at previous credentials that bloggers have gotten. Why I apply for credentials, I often cite the 2004 Democratic National Convention, which in and of itself is usually sufficient to get a press pass. I frequently cite the credentials for the Libby trial from the Media Bloggers Association, credentials from the National Conference on State Legislatures, marketing conferences credentials like OMMA and ad:tech, and so on. Yet this raises the question of how you get the first credential.

Should the Law and Media Project establish and accreditation process for citizen journalists? It could take into account factors like links and traffic, previous credentials, peer review, the willingness of citizen journalists to adhere to ethical standards of reporting, and so on. Such accreditation could be incredibly useful. Having the long established reputation of Yale Law School backing up the accreditation would go a long way. “I’m an accredited citizen journalist by the Yale Law School’s Law and Media Project” could be a great door opener for struggling citizen journalists.

Yet the question is, how big an issue is getting credentials to cover various events? Anyone can walk into a U.S. court to observe and later write about a trial. The accreditation might be helpful in getting lawyers, judges, or legislators to return phone calls, but generally speaking lawyers and judges don’t like to talk to the media about current cases, and legislators will talk to anyone that will listen. Likewise, so far, I’ve found, with the exception of major events like national political conventions, I’ve never been turned down for press credentials. I’m not sure how much other people have been.

Yet this points to another place where the Law and Media Project could play a great role. I consider myself very fortunate to have stumbled into my coverage of the Avery Doninger case. It is, in my mind, a very important case. I am glad that people in the case send me copies of the briefs. I look forward to going to hear arguments at the Second Circuit of Appeals. Yet getting information about the case and getting connected in the first place was a challenge.

How does a citizen journalist find out about important legal cases taking place near them? How do they find out when and where hearings are going to be? How do you get citizen journalists over the initial hump of stepping into a courtroom to take notes? I have greatly enjoyed following the Avery Doninger case. People have asked me what legal case I will follow next, and I have no idea. Whichever case I manage to find enough information about to dig my teeth into. If the Law and Media Project had a good listing of interesting cases and pointers about how to get involved, I could see this helping many citizen journalists and helping get much better coverage of legal issues in our country.

So, it will be very interesting to see what Yale Law’s Law and Media Project, perhaps working together with other great Knight Foundation projects can do. I hope I hear more soon.