Quill: ‘As Newsroom Budgets Shrink, One of the First Victims is Open-Records Fights’
Everyone knows by now that the media industry, particularly the print newspaper sector, is facing some very tough times, with layoffs all around the country, outlets in bankruptcy and less ad revenue coming in due to the one-two punch of the digital transformation and the larger economic recession.
One of the first things that newsrooms are cutting back on, a new story in the Society of Professional Journalists’ magazine Quill finds, is costly freedom of information court battles.
Though no solid numbers are available to define the trend, media lawyers and open-records advocates (including myself!) tell Quill that there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of newsrooms that can afford to take a FOI denial to court.
“Now is precisely when the public needs more information,” I am quoted as saying in the piece. “We are facing historically significant, challenging times. There is lots of money flowing all over the place. People need accountability from the government.”
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ABOUT
Jacqueline Klosek, Senior Counsel in the Business Law Department of Goodwin Procter LLP, is a frequent author and commentator on data privacy and security. You can email her at jacquelineklosek@gmail.com -
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