AAN, along with more than two dozen other media companies and organizations, has joined an Amicus Curiae brief, filed Jan. 23 in federal court in Virginia. The case involves news coverage of the housing of Connecticut inmates in Virginia prisons and whether a newspaper’s Web site opens it to jurisdiction in distant states.
AAN Attorney Alice Neff Lucan looks at efforts by many state legislatures to roll back Sunshine Laws. Her conclusion is that these laws and legislative efforts are troubling but not yet the end of Freedom of Information as we know it. Her advice: ask who's been requesting government information and being denied, then publish that information. "If you don't tell them about access, how is anyone to know or care?" she asks.
Rose Farley of the Dallas Observer tells the riveting story of Murdine "Baby Ruth" Berry, who fought a years-long legal battle to get back the bulk of the 100 acres her great-grandfather, a freed slave, paid a couple of bales of cotton to possess. Farley details not only Berry's long struggle to keep possession of the family farm, but the emotional scars it left on her. "If they think I'm going anywhere, I'm not going anywhere," Berry tells the Observer. "I'll stay here. I don't intend to give it up. I'm a fighting monster."
Russ Martineau, who was let go last week by City of Roses Newspapers, announces today the formation of a new sales and marketing consulting company, Ad Director.com. Martineau had managed the revenue departments for Willamette Week for the past 10 years. He resigned his position as president of the AAN board last week and is replaced by Bill Towler, publisher of City Newspaper in Rochester, N.Y.
