Short Takes On The News

There is a hearing in an appeal today for the anonymous blogger who allegedly defamed Cooley School of Law.  The issue is whether Cooley can publicly identify the blogger as part of the trial proceedings.  The school knows the identity of the person via a subpoena to the blogging service used to make the statements in question.  The trial court had found the language of the statements strong enough to deny First Amendment protection but delayed proceedings because Michigan has not articulated standards for revealing names in these circumstances.  More is at TR News & Insights.

Apparently the debt and job crises in education are not limited to law schools.  The Chronicle of Higher Education reports these were hot topics at the recent meeting of the Council of Graduate Schools.  One of the points discussed included raising a student’s financial literacy as part of the admission process and continuing throughout the length of the program.  This means telling students up front what they are getting into with debt and likely job outcomes.  I’ll note that many of the law school-fraud-in job-statistics-cases dismissed so far mentioned far ranging publicity about the legal job market as notice to students entering law school.  I’m not sure there is a comparable level of publicity for the rest of the academic job market.  The bottom line as always is the investment in education still worth it.

paidContent is reporting on the interesting development by the Financial Times and the Times (London) to offer free or highly subsidized Nexus 7 tablets with a digital subscription.  Most content providers grouse over their inability to get people to pay for their online content or make enough in ad revenues to fund operations.  News Corp. is shutting down the iPad only electronic newspaper The Daily because it did not generate enough subscribers.  This type of promotion may be a way to generate the type of response online news organizations seek.  The Nexus 7 is expensive enough to have perceived value to the consumer that a logoed tote bag may not.  The tablet is not nearly as expensive as an iPad making an affordable promotion.  This may become a model for the rest of the content industry if this offer is successful. 

Speaking of the Financial Times, Michael Bloomberg is considering whether to purchase the paper.  Another addition to Bloomberg Law?  [MG]