News

Tips for obtaining information from reluctant public entities If you’re a journalist, write a story about how you were denied access to a record. If you’re not a journalist, contact local media and ask them to cover the situation. Seek legal advice. If your state government has a freedom of information ombudsman, file a complaint with the ombudsman’s office, or with another state official who deals with compliance with open records laws. Call the county attorney.

ARIZONA -- Two students at Basha High School in Chandler claimed censorship and resigned from their student newspaper last month, while school officials claimed that they had conducted business as usual.

FLORIDA -- University officials returned thousands of newspapers that were seized by campus police Thursday after student journalists named a sexual assault victim in an article.

INDIANA -- A school newspaper that ran a four-page report on oral sex will not have to submit its stories for review by an administrator before publication, a school board voted last week.

The Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation Board upheld the current publication policy for The Triangle, Columbus North High School's student newspaper, by defeating one board member's proposal 5-2.

NORTH DAKOTA -- Public concern for a wheat germ plasm has made public the records of a research foundation associated with a university.

An opinion handed down by the attorney general of North Dakota earlier this month said the research foundation violated the state’s open records laws when it initially denied an open records request for information about the university’s handling of a wheat seed variety. The foundation later delayed producing the requested records.

KENTUCKY-- Journalists in Kentucky are ''cautiously optimistic'' about a case pending before a federal appeals court that could open juvenile and family court proceedings to the public.

After more than 100 years of tightly closed court dockets, ''any step forward would be a giant step forward,'' said John Nelson, former president of the Kentucky Press Association, the organization that is challenging the constitutionality of closed court proceedings and records.

The press association initially filed suit in 2004 against the state of Kentucky in a federal district court in Frankfort, but the court dismissed the suit, claiming that the ''press had no First Amendment right of access to juvenile court proceedings and documents.''

Attorneys for the press association then filed an appeal with the 6th U.S.

ALABAMA -- A professor's fight to obtain records from a university could hit a brick wall if a court agrees that the university was not required to produce records it never created.

In a Jan.

FLORIDA -- Jay Leno may be a popular late night comedian and talk show host, but school officials at Stetson University do not find his jokes very funny -- at least in print.

University officials banned a satirical student publication, Common Sense, from being distributed in October because the magazine quoted a joke Jay Leno made about Mexicans, and for running a picture of a dorm-room window that displayed a rainbow flag with a question mark superimposed over it, said the magazine's Editor in Chief Frank Ganz.

But in November, the university bowed to public pressure and publicity and allowed the second issue of the magazine to be distributed, Ganz said.

INDIANA -- Attorneys for a school district are appealing a state trial court's refusal to dismiss claims by a former student over statements printed about her in her school's student newspaper.

Heide Peek, a 2002 graduate of Whiteland Community High School in Whiteland, Ind., sued the Clark-Pleasant Community School Corporation in 2003, claiming an article in the senior edition of the student newspaper contained defamatory comments about her.

NEW YORK -- A year after a graduate student was kicked out of his school's education program for writing a paper advocating strict classroom discipline, including spanking, his punishment could be over.

A New York appeals court on Jan.