FORUM—Mark Jackson ’85 remembers the framed newspaper article prominently displayed in the house where he grew up. It told the story of his father, a journalist, being “thrown out” of a Long Beach, Long Island city council meeting after he publicly objected to the council going into executive session. Mark’s father, Paul Jackson, cited the First Amendment and the public’s right to know what its local government was doing. The story is poignant and relevant to some of the work Mark oversees today as director of Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic.
“My father was a noble soul,” says Jackson. “He wanted me to be a lawyer. I was inspired by his journalism to do the kind of law that I do.” Jackson spent his forty-plus year career representing the press, culminating in his position as executive vice president and general counsel at Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of The Wall Street Journal. His father wrote for many news outlets, but it’s the work Paul did as editor and publisher for the weekly Long Beach Independent that is most germane. The newspaper was forced to close after the city yanked its designation as its official newspaper—depriving it of valuable revenue from paid public notices.
Today, the clinic’s groundbreaking Local Journalism Project is battling in court to save The Reporter, a community newspaper in Delhi, New York, from a similar fate.
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“We see strengthening local news as one of the most important routes to advancing the practice of democracy,” says Martha W. King, senior program officer at the Revson Foundation. “Independent journalism can hold government accountable, making it more transparent and responsive to its constituents, which in turn encourages more civic participation. Plus, people who consume local news are more likely to vote and be civically engaged.”
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