An unidentified Mobile attorney writing under the pen name “Publius” announced the creation of a new website, alabamacourt.org, billing it as “your source for court trial news” for the Mobile area. The launch was pitched squarely as an answer to what its founders described as a growing gap in local coverage of the courts.
A lament for lost coverage
The announcement opened with a look back at how much the local news landscape had changed. “Just 30 years ago, Mobile was fortunate to have a morning newspaper and an afternoon newspaper,” Publius wrote. “Now, we are to be left with 3 editions a week. Is there anyone that really thinks that there is less news in Mobile?”
The writer took aim at television as well, questioning whether reporters stayed in Mobile long enough to learn the community, and even to pronounce the name of Coden, the small fishing settlement in south Mobile County. In the writer’s telling, the shrinking of print coverage rippled outward, because local television stations often took their cues from the morning newspaper. If the paper did not cover a trial, Publius argued, the television stations would not either.
The case for firsthand reporting
“Several judges and members of the Mobile Bar have commented that there are some spectacular trials, both criminal and civil, that are just not being reported by the newspaper,” the writer said. In response, the site’s organizers — described only as members of the legal community — announced they had decided to report on cases of interest as they unfolded at trial, based on the facts and evidence as they emerged.
The service, Publius said, would be free of charge initially. The organizers acknowledged practical hurdles. Because of the court’s ban on cell phones, laptops and other electronic devices, real-time reporting from the courtroom would be a difficult endeavor. They pledged to follow up each case with more substantive attention on the website.
Analysis over instant updates
The writer drew a pointed contrast with social media. While Twitter offered a great source of instant news, Publius wrote, it provided very little substantive factual and legal analysis. The site promised to fill that void with a fresh legal reading of what transpired in a given case — the significance of an event, a piece of testimony or an item of evidence.
“We will try and have someone in the courtroom as often as practicable to report what is transpiring and the significance of the event, testimony, or the evidence,” the writer said. The organizers even invoked an older tradition, recalling that in years past newspapers would hire their own stenographers to transcribe testimony for readers, a level of attention they said had largely vanished.
An experiment worth watching
Whether a small band of lawyers could sustain courtroom-by-courtroom coverage remained to be seen. But the effort reflected a broader anxiety in Mobile about who would keep an eye on the courts as traditional newsrooms contracted. For a legal community that saw dramatic and consequential cases pass with little public notice, alabamacourt.org represented an attempt to put the record back in front of the people it affected.