Also posted at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society: If citizen journalism is to become a valuable part of the media ecosystem, citizen journalists will need help in navigating increasingly choppy legal waters — and the legal community will need better information on what’s happening in the citizen media arena as well.
Those are among the goals of a new collaboration, announced Monday at a citizen journalism gathering at Harvard Law School, between the Berkman Center’s Clinical Program in Cyberlaw and the Center for Citizen Media. Their new effort, which will be launched this fall, will provide information, education, resources and tools to help address the challenges faced by citizen journalists, said Clinical Program Director Phil Malone.
The project will be a cooperative one and will collaborate widely, noted Dan Gillmor, Director of the Center for Citizen Media. Potential allies include, among many, cyberlaw clinics at other law schools and groups that are already working to provide valuable resources in this arena, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Media Bloggers Association, ChillingEffects.org, and others.
The Center for Citizen Media, a project to enhance and expand grassroots media and its reach, is an affiliate of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Berkman Center’s Clinical Program in Cyberlaw provides high-quality, pro-bono legal services to appropriate individuals, small start-ups, non-profit groups and government entities regarding cutting-edge issues of the Internet, new technology and intellectual property.