As you know, I've been working on creating new opportunities for bloggers including "access" for bloggers. Those efforts are now bearing fruit as we have our first high-profile opportunity.
The U.S. District Court in Washington, DC has agreed to provide the MBA with two press credentials at the upcoming Scooter Libby Trial.
I have been working with the folks at the federal judiciary through for over a year to create this opportunity. It has never been done before. Behind this may be many additional opportunities with the federal and state supreme courts so getting this one right opens up the door to many other cool things. Other institutions will surely be looking at this as well.
The event begins with jury selection on January 16th. The trial is expected to last 4-6 weeks so we will create a schedule for six weeks to allow us to get a good number of our member bloggers involved.
I began to sort out the details for this in November when I was in DC for a First Amendment Center conference called Justice & Journalism at the U.S. District Court in Washington. At that time, I discussed with the court whether we would want seats in the courtroom or the overflow room. Normally I would want to be in the actual courtroom but there was no guarantee we would get it if I asked and they tossed in a nice kicker with the overflow room - WiFi.
This will be our first "event" where we can leverage a new feature built into the MBA site whichi allows us to aggregate blogs posts from members by topic, geography or - in this case - event. All bloggers credentialed for the trial will post on their own blog but those posts will be aggregated and syndicated through the MBA site and then re-distributed through a major media partner (TBA). I am working on a deal to get us some excellent distribution so participating bloggers can expect a fair amount of attention both in terms of traffic and from other media.
Once I have the details sorted we will put out a press release with the official announcement.
