January 4, 2007

Federal Court Grants Media Access to Bloggers

The U.S. District Court in Washington, DC has agreed to provide the Media Bloggers Association with press credentials for two seats at the upcoming Scooter Libby trial. This is a big deal in the development of blog-based independent journalism. MBA president Bob Cox says the plan is to develop a pool of bloggers to share the two seats, rotating them every few days. Details are included in the extended portion of this entry, which has the email from Bob announcing the big news. (If you aren't a member of the MBA, you didn't get the email.) Also, the Associated Press has moved a story looking at efforts by the MBA to increase the level of professionalism and journalistic training of bloggers who are members of the MBA or join the MBA in the future. The AP reports:

As president of the Media Bloggers Association, Cox is about to unveil new membership policies designed to help bloggers who see themselves more as journalists than freeform diarists. ... Among the planned criteria: Members would have to take an online course offered by the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, covering legal issues related to blogging.

Members also could seek credentialed status by undergoing training or demonstrating other work as professional journalists. They also must agree to the organization's ethical standards and adopt formal editorial and corrections policies. Doing so could give them the backing they need to obtain review copies of books and access to newsmakers and events, Cox said.

Dear MBA Member,

I was not quite ready to announce this but as this news is probably going to be mentioned in a major newspaper tomorrow I figure I had better go ahead and fill you all in tonight. As you know, I've been working on creating new opportunities for bloggers including "access" for bloggers.

Those efforts are now bearing fruit as we have our first high-profile opportunity.

The U.S. District Court in Washington, DC has agreed to provide the MBA with two seats at the upcoming Scooter Libby Trial.

Those members interested to participate need to send me an email expressing their interest and some preferred dates. Our plan is to put together a schedule of 15-20 bloggers. Each blogger will be given one of our two press credentials for a few days (we can play with exact dates once I have expressions of interest from members). The blogger can either be you or someone who blogs on a group blog you run (technically members of your group blog are already members, something we are sorting out with the new membership database but that is a different matter). I am hoping to create some overlap in the schedule so there is always one "veteran" and one "rookie" in our two seats. Bloggers who participate are expected to crank out a good deal of material and participate in the syndication of the content through the MBA web site.

Just in case you don't realize it, this is a VERY big deal. I have been working with the folks at the federal judiciary through for over a year to create this opportunity. It has never been done before and it is very important that we do a good job here. Given this, I trust folks will understand that I am going to be very selective as to who gets these credentials and be very hands on throughout to make sure everything runs smoothly and the court feels good about having green-lighted this project. Behind this our many additional opportunities with the federal and state supreme courts so getting this one right opens up the door to many other cool things. Other institutions will be looking at this as well.

The event begins with jury selection on January 16th. The trial is expected to last 4-6 weeks so we will create a schedule for six weeks. Those at the end may either be shut out or be there on the big day when the verdict is announced.

By way of background, I began to sort out the details for this in November when I was in DC for a First Amendment Center conference called Justice & Journalism at the U.S. District Court in Washington. At that time, I discussed with the court whether we would want seats in the courtroom or the overflow room. Normally I would want to be in the actual courtroom but there was no guarantee we would get it if I asked and they tossed in a nice kicker with the overflow room - WiFi. As I considered the options, I concluded that while it is probably more "fun" to be in the courtroom, as a practical matter it made more sense to go for the overflow room with the WiFi. I am sure I will be slammed by a few folks for opting for the overflow room but it struck me as one of those damned if you do/damned if you don't decisions. As my goal with this opportunity is to create a liveblog feed coming from MBA having WiFi access will be extremely important.

Regarding the feed, for those who don't know (read the new site!!!) we have created a very cool feature in the new web site that allows us to aggregate blogs posts from members by topic, geography or - in this case - event. All bloggers credentialed for the trial will post on their own blog but those posts will be aggregated and syndicated through the MBA site and then re-distributed through a major media partner (TBA). I am working on a deal to get us some excellent distribution so participating bloggers can expect a fair amount of attention both in terms of traffic and from other media (expect that on slow days the bloggers themselves will become part of the story).

Robert Cox
President
Media Bloggers Association