A Discussion sponsored by the New England Chapter of the SPJ.
Join HERE on Zoom.
Brittany Hailer
Brittany Hailer is an award-winning investigative journalist and educator based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is the director of the Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and Teaching Professor of Writing at the University of Pittsburgh.
As director of PINJ, Brittany has investigated how the pandemic has impacted the Allegheny County Jail, including the jail’s kitchen, its use of solitary confinement, isolation of the sick. For three years, she has tracked the deaths of those in custody of the Allegheny County Jail. Her work on deaths in custody has been funded by The Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.
In 2023, a state court ordered Allegheny County to overturn the autopsies records of a man who died in the Allegheny County Jail. The county had previously denied a records request submitted in 2020. This three-year legal journey was made possible by legal representation from The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Her work has appeared in Spotlight Pa, Sierra Club Magazine, Pennsylvania Capital-Star and elsewhere.
Kathryn Foxhall
Because she needed a job, Kathryn Foxhall inadvertently became a reporter on a weekly newspaper in her hometown of Selma, Alabama. Her addiction was irreversible within two weeks.
She covered health in Washington for 40 years, including 14 years (1978-1992) as editor of the American Public Health Association’s newspaper.
After years of getting a dynamic education by speaking frankly with sources on Capitol Hill and in federal agencies, she became alarmed when, 20 to 25 years ago, federal workers gradually came under rules prohibiting them from communicating with journalists without the oversight of public relations offices—in reality, heavy censorship coming down from the people in power.
Frank LoMonte
Frank LoMonte is a media lawyer and professor whose research focuses on government restrictions on the First Amendment rights of public employees. He is newsroom legal counsel to CNN in Atlanta and an adjunct professor with the University of Georgia School of Law, where he works with the school’s First Amendment Clinic. He previously served as director of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida and as executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Washington, D.C.