It used to be court systems knew exactly who the reporters were. They were the ink-stained wretches with the press passes roaming the judicial halls and showing up in the gallery at particularly interesting trials. And they knew exactly who was writing about them. The clipping services sent them the articles written by those ink-stained wretches.

Technology, though, has now made it possible for anyone to publish information on the business of the court—from local bloggers to law professors thousands of miles away. Meanwhile, as the mainstream media contracts, fewer reporters from traditional news organizations are covering the courts.

To begin to unpack the implications of that shift, the Northern California district of the Ninth Circuit is hosting a mini-conference on Wednesday (November 4).

"With the upheaval that's taking place in the media landscape, we no longer know who's covering the courts," says David Madden, of the Public Information and Outreach Committee of the Ninth Circuit. "The court reporter is a dying breed. They're not around. Generation X and [the Millenials] are not getting their information in the same manner as we're getting ours."

"If the traditional media is constricting, and if other people, bloggers, and tweeters are covering the courts, or passing along information that gets to people about what's happening at the courts, we should understand that, and they should understand what the court's about," Madden said.

Deets:
"New Media in the Courtroom: How Blogs, Twitter and Social Media are Changing Legal Reporting"
Wednesday, November 4
1 pm - 5 pm
Phillip Burton Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse
450 Golden Gate Ave.
San Francisco

More, after the jump.

Madden says courts face a number of challenges they didn't used to. There's a proliferation of legal bloggers, often laywers and law professors who are commenting on cases around the country. The practice of aggregation means that people posting information online don't always come back to the source to understand cases and issues. And then there's the challenge of people from organizations other than traditional media who want to be included in media pools.

The conference, which may very well be the first of its kind hosted by a U.S. federal court, will include two sessions: