Minnesota Newspaper Association
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First Amendment Forum
News Release
Bill Huntzicker
Department of Mass Communications, 320-308-3293

Should reporters serve as police informants while gathering news for the rest of us?

That’s a question Pam Louwagie faced in her first week as a student newspaper editor when Hennepin County officials served her a subpoena asking for all photographs taken at a campus demonstration the previous fall.

Television reporter Tom Lyden of Fox 9 News in the Twin Cities recently found himself an unwitting informant when St. Paul police had secretly obtained his cell phone records.

Reed Anfinson, publisher of the Swift County Monitor-News in Benson, Minn., works with this issue regularly as he lobbies for a federal shield law to help reporters protect their sources, their notes and other confidential information.

Anfinson, Lyden and Louwagie will join Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for a Free Press, and other Minnesota journalists on April 11 in St. Cloud to discuss these and other legal challenges journalists face in covering government.

“Protecting Reporters, Sources, and Access to Information” will be the topic of the 36th annual First Amendment Forum beginning at 9 a.m. Friday, April 11, in the Atwood Little Theatre at St. Cloud State University.

Dalglish, who spent 20 years as a reporter and lawyer in Minnesota, will lead the program with a keynote address on the state of the First Amendment.

A morning panel will follow at 10 a.m. with a discussion of the Freedom of Information Act and other ways to pry information from government.

Panelists will include Dalglish; Louwagie; Kristi Marohn, watchdog coordinator for the St. Cloud Times; Chris Ison, Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter and professor at the University of Minnesota; Tim Nelson, Minnesota Public Radio reporter and former police and city politics reporter and blogger at the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Lyden and Anfinson will join a panel at 1:15 p.m. to discuss the purpose of shield laws, including the proposed federal shield to help protect the identities of unnamed sources and the confidentiality of reporters’ notes, unpublished photographs and video and audio outtakes.

Dalglish has been a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and a lawyer with Dorsey and Whitney in Minneapolis. As director of the Reporters Committee, she is often the spokeswoman on national television, including CNN and Fox News, for issues involving journalists. Since she began as a reporter, she has worked to improve public access to information from local, state and federal governments.

Dalglish has pushed hard for a federal shield law, especially since federal investigators subpoenaed several reporters in the investigation of leaks by Vice President Cheney’s former chief staff Scooter Libby and allegations of leaks by President Bush’s adviser Karl Rove. A New York Times reporter went to jail before revealing Libby as her source for a story.

Marohn’s coverage of state and local government has included investigations into elected officials’ pay, the top-polluted industries in Central Minnesota and conditions at local dog- and cat-breeding facilities. Last year, she was named to a new position of watchdog coordinator, which involves working with other reporters to foster investigative projects.

Ison, associate professor of journalism at the University of Minnesota, was assistant managing editor for investigative projects at the Star Tribune for three years and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1990. Like Louwagie, he was editor-in-chief of the Minnesota Daily at the University of Minnesota. After graduation in 1983, he covered police and politics for three years at the Duluth News Tribune before moving to Minneapolis.

Nelson nearly died three times in one day on assignment in Thailand, but most of his reporting has involved the relatively calm police and politics of St. Paul for the St Paul Pioneer Press. He moved to Minnesota Public Radio in January.

Anfinson represents Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas on the board of directors of the National Newspaper Association and, in that position, has lobbied for the federal shield law. He has also been board member and president of the Minnesota Newspaper Association and a member of the Minnesota News Council.

Lyden has won awards for his investigative reporting and he has covered a number of high-profile criminal cases. “His reports have led to new laws, a felon’s conviction, a politician’s resignation, and a governor’s open hostility,” according to the Fox 9 Web site.

Louwagie has worked as legal affairs reporter at the Star Tribune and, in the position, discovered that the court system is more secretive than other branches of government. On the panel, she will advocate a freedom of information act that forces courts to open their records for more public scrutiny.

She worked as a reporter at the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Philadelphia Inquirer before moving to Minneapolis. A native of rural southwest Minnesota, she has written about clergy abuse, gang rape, prostitution, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the foreclosure crisis and the collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis.

As editor of the Minnesota Daily, she did not give up the photographs, but her successor, Michele Ames, faced the court and a fine for failing to give up unpublished negatives. The case led to an amendment to the Minnesota Shield Law in the mid 1990s.

The morning panel will be moderated by St. Cloud Times reporter Dave Aeikens, national president-elect of the Society of Professional Journalists, and Mark L. Mills, chairman of the SCSU mass communications department, will moderate the panels.

The First Amendment Forum is sponsored by the SCSU chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Department of Mass Communications, the College of Fine Arts and Humanities, the Minnesota Newspaper Association and the St. Cloud Times.

More information is available from student chairman Kevin Hurd at huke0601@stcloudstate.edu or faculty adviser Bill Huntzicker at the Department of Mass Communications at 320-306-3293 or wehuntzicker@stcloudstate.edu.