I'm excited to welcome Eric Robinson, a noted media and First Amendment lawyer, as a guest blogger. Eric is a Staff Attorney at the Media Law Resource Center, a nonprofit information clearinghouse which monitors and promotes First Amendment rights in libel, privacy, and related fields of law.

Last month, Phoenix police raided the home of Jeff Pataky, a blogger who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, a blog that, not surprisingly, has been highly critical of the Phoenix Police Department.  According to The Arizona Republic, Pataky's home was raided by ten Phoenix police officers who handcuffed his girlfriend for three hours while they conducted the raid.  "We have heard internally from our police sour

United States Senator Benjamin Cardin today introduced legislation that would allow newspapers to become nonprofit organizations in what he described as "an effort to help the faltering [newspaper] industry survive."

Thinking about launching an anonymous blog?  There are lots of reasons you might want to publish your blog or website anonymously. For example, publishing anonymously may protect you from retaliation by those who don't like what you write. We've seen plenty of bloggers harassed or fired from their jobs for what they've written.  In some places, what you write could even threaten your safety or lead to your arrest or detention.  

Next week, I'll be participating in and speaking at Journalism that Matters: Adapting Journalism to the New News Ecology, a conference organized by the Poynter Institute and Media Giraffe Project.

My colleague Ethan Zuckerman just put up a disturbing post about Kubatana, a prominent Zimbabwean NGO, which saw its site taken down because its hosting provider, Bluehost, got cold feet after it discovered the site contained content from (gasp!) Zimbabwe.

Kubatana, among other things, hosts websites for prominent activist organizations like Women of Zimbabwe Arise.  For the past two years, Kubatana has hosted a joint blog for a wide range of Zimbabwean citizens that has, according to Ethan, "been one of the key sources of information and perspective for people around the world who follow Zimbabwe, and a critical outlet for Zimbabweans who have few other ways to communicate."

Ethan reports:

The Associated Press is reporting that two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.