By Catherine Komp, Engagement Director
When’s the last time you read through your media liability insurance? Have you dusted off your bylaws lately? Reviewed your fundraising guidelines and independent journalist contracts?
As the Trump Administration continues targeting news organizations with attacks, investigations and lawsuits, now is the time to make sure your policies and operations are rock solid. One way to do that is through a free service offered by ProJourn, a program of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Many are familiar with ProJourn’s pro bono prepublication legal review of stories and their assistance with public records access. Last year, they added a new pro bono service—legal checkups. Attendees to the NC News & Information Summit can sign up to get one in person next week.
“For Projourn, legal checkups are a direct response to some of the potential legal challenges that we see newsrooms and news organizations potentially facing,” said ProJourn’s Christina Piaia. “There’s been such an encouraging amount of law firms and attorneys that have come to us in the past few months really wanting to help and sign up specifically to help journalism. That’s very inspiring. We have a lot of attorneys that are here and ready to help and we want to make sure we connect the dots with our clients.”
Like a checkup at the doctor’s office, a legal check-up is the first step in getting, and staying, operationally healthy. Piaia says they use a checklist to review various aspects of your news outlet, including corporate governance, contracts, employment, fundraising, taxes, data protection and IP. If there are areas that need attention, ProJourn will then match you with a pro bono lawyer to work on them.
“It’s a great way to have an assessment, but also to feel secure that you can have the legal support after it. We are there to help you in all the steps to make sure that you obtain pro bono legal assistance,” said Piaia.
ProJourn works with for-profit and nonprofit news outlets of all sizes and independent journalists, with a few eligibility guidelines including being focused on local news and using a code of ethics.
Can’t make the Summit? ProJourn offers this service year-round. Fill out this form and indicate you’d like a legal checkup. If you’d like the legal checkup conducted in Spanish or another language, indicate so on the form. You can also sign up for their newsletter for updates about related webinars and trainings.
We had the chance to chat with Christina this week about how a legal check up works; what areas it covers and what sorts of concerns they’re hearing from news outlets and journalists as the 1st Amendment and freedom of the press comes under attack.
NC Local: What kinds of news organizations do you think could benefit from a legal check up? We have quite a variety in the North Carolina ecosystem from the larger ones with bigger budgets that may have been around for decades, to ones that are just kind of starting out and may have a much smaller staff.
Christina Piaia: Here at ProJourn, our mission is to support news organizations and journalists. We also work with filmmakers, people that are doing podcasts, broadcast news, radio. We have a set of eligibility guidelines. We work with both for profit and nonprofit organizations. Ideally, we like the organizations to be focusing on local news or a community focus. They have to be independently owned, but we do recognize the different types of news organizations that are out there. What we like to say is come to us and have a conversation. There’s an eligibility form on our website where people can fill that form out and we make a determination. But we’re really looking to support news organizations and journalists who need legal help in different ways.
NC Local: What led you to see the need for this expanded support and legal check ups for news organizations?
Christina Piaia: At ProJourn, one of the things that we do is a significant amount of outreach and that has led to us really doing a lot of listening and deep thinking about the ways in which we can support journalists and newsrooms. One of the things that was reoccurring when we were seeing the editorial matters coming in were newsrooms having needs beyond that and perhaps being just a handful of people in a newsroom but having questions about contracts or governance or their 501C3 status. We always want to be responsive, so we would try to help them ad hoc on things and put them in touch with different law firms.
But then we decided about a year ago last March to add a non editorial, what we’re calling operations related business stream, to our program. This works in three areas, corporate governance including incorporation bylaws, resource sharing or collaboration agreements for news organizations. We see that being a really incredible, encouraging trend, but we want to make sure that people receive the help that they want. Also, around IP data protection and privacy. So helping people, making sure their websites are up to date and if they have any issues around copyright or trademark. And then we also work in the employment context with helping independent journalists with contracts or perhaps smaller news organizations with some of their employee handbooks.
I think this adds to the whole holistic energy that’s happening across newsrooms. They’re often doing multiple things at once, and it’s nice for them to know that they have a place to come where we can help them with their operations and business needs as well.
NC Local: Are there certain areas that rise to the top of the priority list during a legal checkup?
Christina Piaia: We’ve found a lot of newsrooms and news organizations have had concern around nonprofit status in the last few months. The corporate governance section is a larger part of the legal checkup because of the different structures and requirements. When we do the one-on-one checklist, there’s not actual legal guidance that’s happening there. We pair news organizations or journalists with attorneys because issue spotting and being able to explain the questions is really helpful. After the one-on-one is over, I will review the checklist and help prioritize some of where I see the legal needs, and then I will go back to the news organization, share those priorities, and see if they agree with them. If they need bylaws or need to update them, for example, they fill out our intake form and I’ll make sure that they’re connected with an attorney that can help them with that specific legal matter.
It’s a great way to have an assessment, but also to feel secure that you can have the legal support after it. We are there to help you in all the steps to make sure that you obtain pro bono legal assistance. And there’s been such an encouraging amount of law firms and attorneys that have come to us in the past few months really wanting to help and sign up specifically to help journalism. That’s very inspiring. We have a lot of attorneys that are here and ready to help and we want to make sure we connect the dots with our clients.
NC Local: Do you find that there are certain areas that get overlooked or might be a bit dusty and need to be updated from time to time?
Christina Piaia: Three things are coming up for us in seeing what’s happening out in the world and wanting to make sure that we’re protecting these news organizations from a legal standpoint for any potential challenges.
The first is around media liability insurance, so making sure that news organizations are protected. We find that many news organizations do have media liability insurance, but we want to go a few steps further and look at their policy, make sure that they have choice of attorney, that they have coverage for potential defamation claims or other legal areas.
We also want to really make sure that people also understand legal safety, whether they’re covering protests, or having interactions with police enforcement. Last year, in coordination with our colleagues at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and IWMF, we trained almost 700 journalists in election safety training. So, we are making sure that news organizations have a protocol in place for legal safety.
We of course want to highlight the Reporters Committee 24/7 legal hotline which provides immediate assistance if there’s an arrest or imminent threat of arrest. There are also state services that we love to make sure that we promote, like the NC Press Association’s legal hotline (919-833-3833 or hotline@ncpress.com).
The area that we’re very encouraged by and we see that happening across North Carolina are collaborative agreements across newsrooms where they might be cross publishing or reporting on a story together and sharing that reporting. We are so encouraged by this and by local news, but we do want to make sure that there is an understanding of potential liability and guidelines. We’ll sometimes encourage organizations to develop republishing guidelines or have memorandums of understanding or other types of transactional agreements with organizations to make sure everyone’s on the same page and understands the potential challenges, and again, making sure everyone has the right types of media liability coverage. So that’s one of the ways that we’re trying to encourage this type of collaboration, but in a way that feels secure from a legal standpoint.
NC Local: We’re in a new environment now, with the Trump Administration & his supporters targeting news organizations with investigations, lawsuits and threats. In light of this, what are your concerns and what kinds of new issues are news outlets facing?
Christina Piaia: ProJourn and our colleagues at the Reporters Committee have been closely monitoring developments, we’ve been involved in conversations with our partners across the journalism and news landscape. For ProJourn, legal checkups are a direct response to some of the potential legal challenges that we see newsrooms and news organizations potentially facing. Legal checkups are actually a great way for news organizations to understand, perhaps from an audit perspective or from a legal safety perspective, where their organization may need to tailor more of what they’re doing.
In particular, some of the concerns that we’ve heard from news organizations are around the 501C3 status itself. So making sure governance papers and other things are being followed. We’ve also been conducting webinars about some of these issues. About two weeks ago we had over 100 participants join us for some conversations around challenges to 501C3, which also looked at reporting and not endorsing political candidates and what that looks like, how fundraising can also potentially be a challenge to some news organizations and making sure you’re following all of the regulations around that.
Also, it’s important to understand there’s no way that a news organization or anyone can really predict what is to come. We can know some things and we can prepare and that’s what we’re doing, but also to know that as things come along, we’re here to support and answer questions and provide guidance and education around that. These aren’t things that you don’t have to try to resolve on your own or figure out on your own.
NC Local: Are there any particular legal concerns for news and information organizations that are covering immigrant communities?
Christina Piaia: I’d like to point out a resource that our colleagues at the Reporters Committee just put together a few weeks ago, specifically covering immigration, available in English and Spanish. There are a few different concerns that are coming up. One concern is understanding who’s doing the reporting and where they’re located. There are some news organizations that are working with individuals that might not have protected status here in the United States. Again that goes to some of the legal safety concerns and considerations that you might want to make.
There’s also understanding where you are and what you’re reporting. For example, different laws and regulations are going to be happening at the border, but we’re now seeing individuals going to schools or places of public accommodation, so understanding where you’re situated and how those rules and regulations can change based on jurisdiction.
We’re definitely encouraging all sorts of public records requests and access to courtrooms—the protections that you have as a reporter and as a news organization to make sure that the public is still receiving this information and that it’s in the public eye. We certainly don’t want there to be any deterrence of news organizations reporting on this crucial topic. So please contact the Reporters Committee hotline; if you have challenges around this, we want to hear about it. And certainly, if you are seeking documents or having challenges around reporting on this, we have ways that we can help.
NC Local: You’re offering legal checkups at the 2025 NC News & Information Summit, which we’re really excited about. But for those who can’t sign up for one, is this something you offer year-round?
Christina Piaia: Yes. The legal checkups are a great way for news organizations to assess their legal risks. With the help of our partner, Davis Wright Tremaine, we developed a checklist that covers several different areas of law. We meet with the news organization or independent journalist and ask them a series of questions and make sure that they feel comfortable with how their newsroom is operating from a legal perspective. We’ve done a number of them so far, and what we found is that it really opens the door to a better understanding of things that they need to check up on or things that they need to create that they were perhaps waiting to create.
We do the legal checkups for people that are part of ProJourn. By filling out the eligibility form, there is then the opportunity to express interest in the checkup. We do them regularly so it can be done outside of the context of the conference, but we are excited to do it at the Summit. It’s great when we have the opportunity to meet clients on the ground where they are and we have a great set of law firms and attorneys from North Carolina that are going to be there with us at the conference to do these checkups.
NC Local: We’ve been talking about some pretty serious things, but you did identify some bright spots, including the collaborations you’re seeing in North Carolina. Any other bright spots that you want to end with?
Christina Piaia: I believe in local news. It’s growing stronger and through collaborations and connection with community, local news helps communities build trust with each other, learn from each other and move forward. I’ve spent much of the past two and a half years being on ground with a lot of these newsrooms and I feel inspired by what’s happening and the support of the community. I think North Carolina is a model example of that and I’m encouraged that the future is growing and bright for local news.
