Katie Maloney, a staff writer for the Student Press Law Center, reported, “Harrisonburg Police officers and the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Rockingham County, Va. executed a search warrant in the newsroom of the James Madison University student newspaper Friday.”

The SPLC also reported that the officers and attorney seized photographs of a recent riot near campus.

Please check the SPLC’s website for a full report here.

The Observer, the independent newspaper of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s, accepted the resignation of Assistant Managing Editor Kara King, who took responsibility for the publication of an anti-gay cartoon in last Tuesday’s edition of the paper.

“A miscommunication between another editor and myself led to the comic running without me first reading and approving the material,” said King in a letter dated today. “Regardless, no excuse can justify the comic even being considered for publication, and the duty to censor it fell to me. I failed to do so, and am solely responsible for providing a forum for this message of hate.”

We first told you about the cartoon on Friday.

An editorial in today’s The Observer, the independent newspaper of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s, apologized for an anti-gay cartoon that appeared in the January 13 edition of the paper.

According to IrishCentral.com, the cartoon depicts a conversation between a person and a saw. The saw asks, “What’s the easiest way to turn a fruit into a vegetable?” The man says, “No idea.” The saw replies, “A baseball bat.”

“The Observer, though an independent newspaper, is representative of the community of the University of Notre Dame and the values it so cherishes: family, understanding, service, respect and love,” read the editorial. “Allowing this cruel and hateful comic a place on our pages disgraced those values and severely hurt members of our Notre Dame family — our classmates, our friends. For this, we sincerely apologize.”

Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) said they contacted the paper’s editor after they saw the cartoon.

“This type of advocacy of anti-LGBT violence must stop. It isn’t funny. What’s more, it promotes hate crimes, which are all too prevalent in society today,” reads a post on GLAADBlog.org.

GLAAD also says that the cartoonist posted the cartoon to his blog, and said the original cartoon’s punch line was “AIDS.” The cartoonist claimed the punch line was changed, because the paper did not want to poke fun at AIDS.

“The Observer made a dangerously misguided decision that promoting violence was somehow superior to making fun of HIV/AIDS. Both versions of the cartoon were abhorrent,” said GLAAD.

According to the newspaper, one reason for the cartoon’s publication was a breakdown in the editing process.

“On our part, we must practice more responsible journalism and editing. That this comic was published reveals holes in our editing practices, which are currently being addressed.”

UPDATE: January 15 @ 8:25 p.m.

The artist’s blog seems to have been deleted, but Google has a cache of the blog with a copy of the comic, the original comic, and an online conversation with The Observer.

The conversation shows The Observer rejecting the original comic, and then saying the new version is “good.”

The cartoonists did release an apology.

“We cannot begin to express how apologetic we are for everyone who has been hurt by our comic and its implied message,” read the statement from Colin Hofman, Lauren Rosemeyer and Jay Wade.

What do you think about this situation? Do you believe The Observer should revise more than their editing procedures?

Let us know what you think by leaving a comment!

The Society of Professional Journalists stepped up to support Northwestern University’s Medill Innocence Project today.

SPJ joined three other organizations in an amicus curiae brief, which supports a motion to stop a subpoena from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

The subpoena is demanding notes and other materials created by the student journalists involved with the Project’s investigation of Anthony McKinney, who has been in prison for 31 years for murder.

The students found information that led a judge to grant McKinney another hearing, which then led the Cook County state’s attorney to subpoena the information.

SPJ joined the Student Press Law Center, the College Media Advisers, Inc. and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in the brief.

The brief argues that, while collecting the information, the students were reporters. As reporters, the students are protected by the Illinois Reporter’s Privilege Act.

A judge accepted the brief and has scheduled a hearing for Feb. 10.

The Student Press Law Center has a copy of the brief on its website in PDF format.

In related news, ChicagoBreakingNews.com is reporting, “Today, an attorney representing the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, CBS News, the Washington Post and the Hearst Corp. – in addition to a dozen more newsgathering organizations – filed a brief in Cook County Circuit Court opposing the forced surrender of the material.”

Hopefully justice will prevail in the end, and the court will realize, as they did in Tinker v. Des Moines, that students and teachers do not shed their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate.

We will keep you posted on future developments.

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College Media Advisers, Inc. recently released their annual Keeping Free Presses Free publication, which is a treasure-trove of great information for student journalists and advisers.

Andrea Breemer Frantz, associate professor of journalism at Robert Morris University and a member of the CMA First Amendment Committee, discusses her experience and thoughts on the First Amendment and private universities in “When the First Amendment doesn’t apply: Teaching free speech and press at private schools presents challenges.”

Breemer Frantz also revisits Tinker v. Des Moines, one of the most important Supreme Court cases for students in U.S. history, by interviewing Mary Beth Tinker in “Wearing our constitutional rights as we walk through the schoolhouse gate.”

Tinker, her brother John, and their friend Christopher Eckhardt wore black armbands in 1965 as a way to protest the Vietnam War. They were quickly disciplined by the school district.

As Breemer Frantz writes, “What began as a simple call for peace by a handful of teen-agers quickly developed into a precedent-setting challenge before the Supreme Court to determine just how far the First Amendment could stretch to those under the age of 18.”

The article celebrates the 40th anniversary of the 7-2 Supreme Court decision, which said First Amendment rights do not end at the schoolhouse door.

Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, discusses current and past court battles resulting from online publications and cyberbullying laws in “More students facing online censorship.”

According to LoMonte, some states have enacted cyberbullying laws with broad language, which results in “open-ended enforcement discretion that can easily be manipulated by govern¬ment officials looking to stifle legitimate speech.”

LoMonte also discusses the pitfalls of being a student media adviser in “The cost of defending students’ rights: Two advisers lose jobs for defending the rights of their students.”

The article highlights the circumstances surrounding cases of adviser abuse at Maryland’s Morgan State University and Clark College in Washington.

The publication also features a roundup of 15 college press cases through the years, an informative article on obtaining a $5,000 grant as part of the Liberty Tree Initiative, and a great article on SPLC’s Adam Goldstein answering 10,000 legal requests since 2003.

You can find the publication at the CMA website.