The Student Press Law Center recently published a story about the Eastern Connecticut State Campus Lantern’s move to an online-only publication. Long-time readers will recall the move created quite a controversy on campus. Here’s the SPLC story by Marnette Federis, a very balanced article, IMHO.

I’m quoted a couple of times discussing the potential for censorship and also the possibilities for community engagement online. And Adam Goldstein’s wrap-up of the “is it censorship?” question is excellent:

A school CANNOT force you to publish in a medium you DO NOT want to use. Under basic First Amendment law, you cannot be compelled to speak against your will. That does not mean the school is obligated to pay for your new medium; it only means you need not provide your words to the old medium.

A school CANNOT prohibit you from publishing in a medium you DO want to use. As editors at a public college, you have the right to determine how to disseminate your work. For example, while a school is not obligated to provide funding for an online publication, it could not deny funding to an existing print publication because the editors wanted to publish the content online as well.

A school CAN allocate funds to a specific type of medium. If a publication submits a budget for the next year that includes printing costs, it cannot take the money allocated for printing and use it for buying a server to host its digital edition. This is not a media issue; if someone is granted funding for a volleyball team, they couldn’t take the money and fund a basketball team.

New Campus Lantern EIC Tori Saulnier spoke during our new media sessions in New York, and I hope to have video of her talk up within the next couple of days.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 at 5:01 am and is filed under Learn, Multimedia views, Legal Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.