Welcome to the new online home of the Student Press Law Center. We hope you’ll stay awhile and come back often.The pages you’re visiting are the work of an incredibly talented (and patient!) team of volunteers with Michigan-based SNWorks, a website design and hosting company that graciously donated its pro-bono services in support of the SPLC’s mission. We’re endlessly indebted to Travis Ricks, Lauren Corbeill, Anna Myers, Mike Joseph and the entire SNWorks team for creating a visually engaging, easy-to-navigate site built on their unique Gryphon Content Management System. (As with any new home, we’re still decorating the place and moving in the furniture, so if something’s not quite perfect, send us an email and we’ll get it fixed.)New features you’ll see for the first time on the site include:
- Pages highlighting each of the issues – press freedom, school transparency, civic participation and online citizenship — on which the SPLC’s advocacy work focuses, with opportunities for you to get involved in helping improve the state of young people’s rights to obtain government information, to share ideas free from threats and intimidation, and to have a meaningful voice in the policies affecting their lives.
- Regularly updated practical tips – “From the hotline” – that address the real-life legal issues students and teachers are encountering, based on the 2,000 calls and emails SPLC’s legal staff handles every year. (If you’d like to see your own question answered online, send it in.)
- Transcripts of the SPLC’s monthly podcasts, featuring interviews with leading journalists and legal newsmakers about contemporary issues in the law of student media.
- A direct link to SPLC’s YouTube page, where you’ll find an expanded collection of educational videos covering the most-asked subjects from our attorney hotline.
And we’re adding much more in the coming weeks, including a greatly expanded Law Library that will provide legal researchers with a one-stop-shopping center for the court cases affecting student journalists’ rights.All of the familiar useful features you’ve enjoyed on SPLC.org are still here, including our quizzes, our model student-media policies, and our fill-in-the-blanks open-records request letter, used 43,000 times a year to help journalists (and inquisitive citizens) get the government records they need.And one last thing hasn’t changed: Our work depends on your generosity. If you like the expanded services the SPLC is offering, consider making a tax-deductible secure online donation in honor of the Center’s 40th anniversary. Let us know what you think – are you finding what you need to get educated about your legal rights? What could we be doing better? What should we add next?