Posts Tagged ‘Frank LoMonte’

140 Days Later, Georgia College Paper Celebrates (Partial) Press Victory

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 9, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

It took more than four months and a fair bit of squabbling, but The Collegian at Georgia Perimeter College has finally begun receiving a set of records its staffers first requested from the school’s overseeing body in late July.

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As I previously posted, since late last semester, the Collegian has been investigating a $16 million budget deficit at GPC that was accompanied by the controversial removal of the school’s president.   Over the summer, the paper filed a standard open records request with the University System of Georgia (USG)– GPC’s administrative overlord– to obtain documents related to the budget turmoil.

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The USG countered that the request would cost close to $3,000, an amount Student Press Law Center executive director Frank LoMonte deemed “excessive” and outside counsel representing the Collegian called “arbitrary, capricious, and deliberately designed to obstruct access to public information of obvious critical concern.”

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Amid these publicly-stated concerns, the school first lowered the fee to a still outlandish $1,900, and most recently to $291, which Collegian EIC David Schick confirms is “a 90 percent reduction from the original estimate.”  Speaking of capricious…

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Yet, as Schick told me recently, “[E]ven after they agreed to lower the cost, they [were] delaying giving them to me by claim[ing] that every document has to be reviewed for ‘proprietary information,’ which ‘might be’ a part of an ‘open investigation,’ unrelated to the budget deficit I’m investigating.  Suspicious?”

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Yes.  As the Collegian’s counsel wrote to the USG last month, “Frankly, from my vantage point it seems like pertinent, newsworthy information is being deliberately witheld under pretext and I respectfully request that you please offer a cogent explanation or release the records as promised with all deliberate speed.”

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It ultimately wasn’t speedy, but now, at long last, there has been a bursting of the obfuscating-overcharging open records bubble.  Schick: “So far, we just have a partial amount of the total request, since they were told by our lawyer to release us information on a rolling basis.  But I’d say we can definitely mark this one as a win for the college journalist.”

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Related

Student Newspaper’s $16 Million Investigation Hits $3,000 Wall

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Student Newspaper’s $16 Million Investigation Hits $3,000 Wall

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on October 24, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

David Schick spent months on a $16 million story– before hitting a nearly $3,000 wall.  In Schick’s words, “The wall took the form of exorbitant Open Records Act costs.”

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Since late last spring semester, the editor-in-chief of The Collegian has been investigating a $16 million budget deficit at Georgia Perimeter College and the accompanying controversial removal of the school president.

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Over the summer, a new number entered– and has continued to partially hold up– Schick’s investigation: $2,963.39.  GPC administrators initially charged the Collegian that amount to fulfill a standard open records request for documents related to the budget turmoil.  The sudden, extreme fee was a gigantic deviation from GPC’s response to three previous Collegian requests.  For those requests, the school supplied more than 1,200 pages of documents, which required 39 hours of staff work to ferret out and compile, for FREE.

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So, to review…

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First three requests over the summer: handled for free.

Fourth request, very similar to the first three: Close to $3,000.

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In a letter to the school, Student Press Law Center executive director Frank LoMonte called the fourth request charge “excessive.”  After the SPLC intervention, GPC dropped the fee to a still seemingly egregious $1,900.

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Local legal counsel assisting the Collegian– obtained through the SPLC referral network– described the latter amount as “arbitrary, capricious, and deliberately designed to obstruct access to public information of obvious critical concern.”

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According to the counsel’s separate letter to the school, the paper “is willing to pay $100 . . . to obtain the documents requested.”  Schick is hopeful for a resolution soon.

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My Take: GPC officials, a bit of free advice.  You cannot erase a $16 million deficit by over-charging people who are requesting the truth.  Your school’s obviously in trouble.  The student paper simply wants to help, in part by providing answers about how you got into this mess and how you can clean it up.  Obstructing their efforts just seems lame, and out of step with the transparency needed to right your revenue ship.  As anyone who’s followed Wall Street knows, moral and economic deficits often run together.

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Related

A 20-Cent Public Records Fight Pits Cal Poly vs. Student Newspaper

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College Media Hall of Fame, Class of 2011: Frank LoMonte, Executive Director, Student Press Law Center

Posted in CMM Hall of Fame, College Media, Free Press Fights, Journalism, tagged , , , , , , on August 9, 2011 | 7 Comments »

The College Media Hall of Fame is a digital enshrinement of individuals, news outlets, and organizations who have made a lasting impact on collegemediatopia or greatly contributed to it over the past year.  Much like last year’s inaugural batch (known as the CMM 10), this year’s inductees include standout student journalists, innovative student media entrepreneurs, and impassioned advocates of campus press 2.0.  With a hat tip to the annual Time 100, many of the posts announcing each honoree include a few words of adoration penned by a close friend or colleague. Next up…

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Frank LoMonte, Esq.

Executive Director, Student Press Law Center

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Frank LoMonte is a media law wunderkind.  He helps student journalists, their advisers, their professors, and their publications at a prodigious rate, daily. Make no mistake: LoMonte is the face of student press rights in this country.  It’s a smiling one.

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LoMonte has been SPLC exec. director since January 2008.

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His optimism is infectious.  His knowledge of the law is truly humbling.  During the conventions at which I’ve been lucky enough to catch him in action, he holds sway over a room with an unyielding zest and a tirelessness, literally (LITERALLY) speaking nonstop with a revival preacher’s flair, answering quick-fire questions smoothly without prep, and then jetting to his next session to start again.

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He is also among the most quotable men I know.  Among his gems was an aside this past spring referencing the sudden shady dismissals of two college media advisers. In his words, “There are two occupations in America that are more dangerous the better you are at them: journalism adviser and suicide bomber.” 

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For his impassioned defense of the student press, I am honored to name Frank LoMonte as an inductee to CMM’s College Media Hall of Fame.

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“Hardest-Working Man in the Free Speech Business”

By Adam Goldstein

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Frank LoMonte is the hardest-working man in the free speech business. He’s here when I arrive at the office in the morning and here when I leave at night. If it’s 7:30 p.m. on the West Coast, and you have a free speech question, you’ve got a 50/50 chance of reaching Frank in Arlington, Virginia, where it’s 10:30 p.m. on the East Coast. And it’s only 50/50 because half the time, he’s on the road, traveling to speak to students and other lawyers across the country, wherever the questions are or it might do some good forsomeone. If Xanadu is a real place, I’m sure Frank will be there sometime in the next three years.

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I’ve been tempted to stay at the office overnight to see if there’s an army of Franks, one of them punching in on a time clock to take over when the other one goes home. That would explain a lot. It certainly feels like he’s an army, waging a carefully coordinated battle in favor of student media on multiple fronts: legal, ethical, and practical. It’s not unusual to talk with him or get an e-mail late at night or on the weekend. I can’t rule out the possibility that he moonlights as the Energizer bunny.

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Frank is deeply committed and motivated to act to do what is right, and college journalists will probably never know how much he does on a daily basis to help them. There’s no fanfare when someone spends his overnight hours to draft comments on federal regulations; almost no one will know you did it, and absolutely no one would know if you didn’t. But representing the voice of college media to government agencies is the right thing to do, and that’s enough for Frank.

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What’s astonishing is what Frank is doing when you don’t see him. When he’s not on the phone with you, answering your legal questions; when he’s not filing briefs on your behalf; when he’s not visiting with your staff in a town on a corner of the map that, presumably, was named after one of the six people that lives there; when he’s not writing op-ed pieces to defend student journalists when local newspapers get cold feet on First Amendment issues; when he’s not speaking to groups of lawyers to convince them of the importance of your civil rights.

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Whether he visits your small township or your major metropolitan city for a media conference, he is an incredibly dynamic and popular speaker. As he’s speaking, the students are tweeting his talk, divided into t-shirt ready quotes. Once his presentation is over, he has a huge line of students waiting to ask him questions and barely has time to make it to his next presentation.

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For the approximately 25 minutes per week you don’t see Frank working to help student journalists, I assure you, he is still working to help them. This makes him an inspiration to all of us, and/or proof that we have perfected human cloning and picked the perfect person to clone. I admire Frank for his amazing dedication and tireless work to protect student journalists’ first amendment rights.

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Goldstein is the SPLC’s attorney advocate and a CMM 10 honoree.

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Other Class of 2011 CMM Hall of Fame inductees:

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Michael Koretzky

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