Does Student Class Work Count as Journalism?
From this week’s subscriber-only Chronicle of Higher Education: New Jersey tried to seize video tapes from a class project exploring whether a death row inmate received a fair trial. The student’s lawyers argued that the project counted as journalism because of the nature of the class and the tapes could not be seized because of a law protecting journalists and their sources. The state wanted to use the tapes to defeat the inmate’s appeal, thinking that he confessed to the crime on camera. The judge sided with the student and called the state’s supoena a fishing expedition. The state also subpoenaed the university, but the article does not mention that outcome.
