Rockbridge Report

Well, I think Jacob pretty accurately described the Supreme Court experience. I echo everything he said and add this: it’s much smaller than I thought and the security is insane. Seriously, a bulging, muscular security guard with an earpiece bored laser beam holes into my scalp with his eyes. I’m just sayin’.

Being in D.C. offered me more than just a look at the court of supreme-ness. It made me take a closer look at being a journalist.

In Lexington, sometimes you forget that people are living and working outside of our bubble in the Blue Ridge. Not having covered more than what’s happening on Main Street or in the Commons, it seems daunting to think of reporting on something on such an important, national scale.

I think to a certain extent the isolation is crippling—our students don’t get some of the opportunities that, for example George Washington University, students receive when attending school in a big city. Taking off class to see the arguments and making the three hour drive was a trek for us, but for the District journalism students, it may just be another day in the j-school. Jacob seemed to make a similar claim when he said that G.W. always wins big awards at the Society of Professional Journalists conferences because they’re right in the heat of the action. It’s not a huge undertaking for their newspaper to send out a photographer to get a shot of a political figure. On the other hand, I doubt the EC would fund a Ring-Tum Phi D.C. bureau.
Taking the current job market and the state of the industry into consideration plus hearing about how so many professionals don’t envy my “situation” going into the job force, I found it refreshing how many of the people I met said that the future of news is in our hands. It wasn’t a trite Whitney Houston “I believe the children are our future” comment, but rather it was a call for a change in the current model to keep the business afloat.

Many seasoned, well-respected journalists, like Kathy Kiely, said that their newsrooms have put them in the difficult positions of being left with a piece of equipment that they don’t know how to use, and being asked to integrate it into their piece. Print people have been forced to figure out how to use cameras and digital recorders in the field. It’s quite possible to say that many of our 202 students could more efficiently put together a package than many veteran reporters.

And for that I am very thankful. Fixing the industry will be up to us. Luckily we will all be armed with the tools necessary to do this. W&L does a great job of making sure students know how to do it all—we write, record, shoot video, edit, and blog. Plus we’re required to take enough classes outside of the department to fit it all into the real world. It seems tedious to some of us now, but having seen “the other side” so to speak, we should all be grateful and know that we’re in good hands over in Reid Hall.

When our cab pulled around the Capitol and up to the Supreme Court, I looked with dismay at the line that stretched all the way across the plaza and down the street. Thankfully, Professor Locy’s years as a Supreme Court reporter were about to come in handy. Skirting the tourists, protestors and other crowds milling outside the main entrance, she led us in a quiet side door … and right into a scene almost as chaotic as the one outside. Let’s say this about the court: they need a lot of employees just to herd crowds around the building.

We were slated to hear two cases: Summum v. Pleasant Grove, Utah and Bell v. Virginia. The Bell case revolved around a very narrow section of Virginia law. While it was technically a case about the death penalty, it really focused mostly on whether or not poor representation in state court was enough to lead to new hearings in federal court (at least that’s what I think the case was about).

The Summums, however, were a different matter entirely. That case focused on whether or not the City of Pleasant Grove, which allowed the Fraternal Order of the Eagles to put a Ten Commandments monument in a city park, must also allow the Summums – a small sect that combines several faiths – to post a monument of their Seven Aphorisms.

The lawyers for the city went first, but Chief Justice John Roberts interrupted the city’s lawyer with a question before a minute had passed. The frantic pace kept up after that, as every justice but Clarence Thomas piled questions on the city’s lawyer, a member of the U.S. Solicitor General’s Office (who was arguing in favor of the city) and then the church’s attorney. Everyone seemed to have a question, and it was impressive to watch the lawyers manage to keep up with the judges and sometimes answer several questions at once (I’m also amazed that the reporters can write fast enough to keep notes on all of the questions).

When the court is dealing with a technical case like Bell v. Virginia, the courtroom is usually half full and sometimes seems a bit sleepy. That wasn’t the case during the Summum case. The courtroom was packed, and everyone was leaning forward to catch what the justices and lawyers would say next. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah sat in one of the front rows to see how his constituents would fare.

The justices seemed torn as they debated the case, and I left with no clear idea of who would prevail when the opinion is released. On the one hand, if the monument was really a form of government speech, as Pleasant Grove’s attorneys argued, that might create concerns with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. But on the other hand, you could tell that the justices worried that a finding in favor of the Summums would open our nation’s parks to a raft of unusual, pointless or even frivolous monuments. The case revolved around terms like “limited public forum,” “government speech” and other items we’d covered in Journalism Law.

The press sits on the side of the courtroom near the front in a series of benches reserved for their use. It was fun to watch them all go careening out of the courtroom after the Summum case ended, leaving behind a half-empty courtroom for the Bell case. When we went down to the pressroom at the conclusion of the arguments, they were all filing their first Web updates for a decision that Chief Justice Roberts had read out at the start of the session. That case involved a suit between the Navy and environmental groups who wanted to restrict the Navy’s ability to use sonar in training exercises near the California coast. The environmentalists argued that the sonar was harmful to marine mammals. The court sided with the Navy, and the Chief Justice finished reading a summary of his opinion at 10:10. The Wall Street Journal had an e-mail alert out by 10:18. Now that’s a quick turnaround.

It seems like the court beat is sometimes a quiet, slower-paced one as reporters work on preview stories, prepare for upcoming cases or read through opinions. But on days like this one, when a major oral argument coincides with an important opinion, the job is full of breaking news. One of the hardest jobs is translating difficult legal arguments into clear, articulate prose that readers can understand even if they don’t have a law degree. That is relatively easy in a case like Summum v. Pleasant Grove or the sonar case, but on other days it can be a difficult task.

There was one wonderful irony in our visit to the court’s pressroom. Inside we met Lyle Denniston, the dean of the press corps and the longest-tenured reporter on the court beat. He wasn’t working for AP, Reuters or a major newspaper, however. Instead, he was the lone reporter in the press room who works for a blog: Scotusblog.com. Maybe veteran reporters can adapt to the brave new world of journalism.

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