Contact: Beverly KeneagyCommunications, 904-626-0017
The Student Press Law Center Board of Directions has unanimously selectedVirginia Edwards as its new Chair, and appointed Patrick Carome and Mike Godwin,both of whom are accomplished lawyers in the online publishing field, to itsBoard of Directors.
The Student Press Law Center (SPLC) is a Washington, D.C.-area non-profitwhose mission is to advocate for free-press rights for high school and collegejournalists. It also provides legal information and referral assistance at nocharge to students and the educators who work with them.
Edwards is the president of Editorial Projects in Education, the 90-personnonprofit corporation that publishes Education Week and the annualreports Quality Counts, Diplomas Count and Technology Counts. Shealso serves as the editor and publisher of Education Week. Prior to that,she worked for two years for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement ofTeaching and for nearly 10 years as an editor and reporter for TheCourier-Journal in Louisville, Ky.
Edwards said she is excited to serve as chair as the organizationcelebrates its 35th anniversary. “I’m looking forward tohelping the SPLC complete the strategic planning process that will serve as ourblueprint for moving into the next decade. I’m also looking forward to theprospects of expanding our advocacy work and our youth outreach into the digitalpublishing age,” she said.
Carome and Godwin replace outgoing board members Rosalind Stark, formerlyof the Radio and Television News Directors Association, and Shawn Chen of theAssociated Press. Edwards thanked Stark, the outgoing board chair, and Chen fortheir many years of dedicated service during a time of enormous change that sawthe organization complete a successful endowment campaign and recruit theCenter’s first new executive director in 22 years.
“The addition of two respected online media experts, Mike Godwin andPat Carome, to SPLC’s board perfecly positions the organization as wemodernize our programs to keep pace with the way young people gather and shareinformation today,” Edwards said.
Carome is a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, LLP inWashington D.C., where he represents leading communication and media companiesin complex litigation and counseling matters. Carome’s areas of expertiseinclude defamation, privacy, copyright, trademark, press freedoms, trade secretsand general tort and contract laws.
He has represented a broad range of clients that include AOL, TimeWarner, eBay, Google, Yahoo!, The Washington Post, The New YorkTimes, the Los Angeles Times, ABC and Cable News Network.
Carome formerly worked as a staff attorney for the The WashingtonPost and served as staff counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives SelectCommittee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran.
Godwin is general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, where he superviseslegal policy and advises business affairs for the non-profit organization thatoffers wiki projects, including Wikipedia, one of the most-visited websitesworldwide. He is a published author and has extensive experience in legalpolicymaking concerning technology, privacy, and the Internet, includingcriminal, constitutional, copyright, media and telecommunications issues.
He has previously served as a research fellow at Yale University, holdingdual positions in the Information Society Project at YaleLaw School, and at the Yale Computer Science Department’s Privacy,Obligations and Rights in Technologies of Information Assessment project. He hasalso served as legal director of Public Knowledge; staff attorney and policyfellow for the Center for Democracy and Technology; and staff counsel of theElectronic Frontier Foundation.
The SPLC’s 15-member board includes representatives from thejournalism, legal, education, and nonprofit management fields.
The Student Press Law Center, which was founded in 1974, receivesapproximately 2,500 calls a year nationwide from student journalists, teachersand others who have concerns about censorship, free speech or other FirstAmendment rights. In addition to providing educational materials for studentjournalists on a wide variety of legal topics, SPLC operates an AttorneyReferral Network of approximately 175 lawyers across the nation who provide freelegal representation to local students when necessary.
For more information on the SPLC, go to www.splc.org.