Meet the Pennsylvania lawyer empowering local newsrooms’ ‘dogged bravery’

An inside look at how attorney Paula Knudsen Burke and the Local Legal Initiative of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press defend the First Amendment.

By Richard J. Tofel

When I started out as a young press lawyer, more than 40 years ago now, newsrooms across the country could count on an extensive group of experienced legal counsel on whom they could rely from day to day, and also when litigation arose. The strong profitability of metro newspapers meant there were experienced outside counsel in every major city, and a growing set of inside lawyers at almost all the major news organizations. 

Today, the situation is far different, and not in a good way. Twenty years of business decline for metro newspapers has wreaked havoc on the ranks of experienced outside counsel; many publishers, struggling financially, have opted to forego the accountability and enterprise reporting that require the most legal support; and the growing ranks of hundreds of nonprofit newsrooms boast just a small handful of inside lawyers across the entire cohort. 

Into that breach have stepped a number of new entrants, but none so significant and ambitious as the Local Legal Initiative of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The LLI, supported by philanthropy, places a press lawyer in a state, and then offers their services, free of charge, to local and regional newsrooms in that state, in effect creating a shared “in-house” counsel for a range of news organizations. 

Pennsylvania was one of the LLI’s inaugural states thanks to support from the Knight Foundation, matched locally by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. The Initiative, still with funding from Knight nationally and now a range of funders locally, currently operates as well in Colorado, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. It recently announced plans to expand to Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Mississippi. 

In Pennsylvania, attorney Paula Knudsen Burke is the LLI. A two-time graduate of Penn State, with undergraduate degrees in both journalism and Spanish and a law degree PSU’s Dickinson School of Law, Burke worked in private legal practice and nonprofits before joining the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, where she served as director of legislative affairs. She then went to work for LNP | LancasterOnline, first as a reporter and later an editor, including as one of the first reporters at The Caucus, LNP’s publication covering Pennsylvania state government. She joined RCFP at the outset of the LLI in 2020 and is now senior supervising attorney in Pennsylvania. In 2024, she received PNA’s Benjamin Franklin Award for Excellence for “outstanding service to the news media industry.” Last year she was a finalist for Law.com’s Pennsylvania Attorney of the Year Award for lawyers who have “had a distinct impact on the law and the legal profession in Pennsylvania.” 

In her LLI role, Burke works regularly with newsrooms across the Commonwealth, but most often with 10 news organizations, including the Centre Daily Times in State College, The Philadelphia Inquirer, LebTown in Lebanon, LNP | LancasterOnline, the Mirror in Altoona, PennLive, Public Source in Pittsburgh, Spotlight PA, Johnstown’s Tribune-Democrat, and WITF in Harrisburg. She estimates that she works at least once a week with editors at LNP and Spotlight PA and at least monthly with each of the others. Of these 10 news organizations, only The Inquirer, the Centre Daily Times, and PennLive have access to in-house counsel.  

Burke works out of the PNA office in Harrisburg, and closely with the attorney for PNA itself, who focuses on business law and some legislative affairs work; PNA does not have its own in-house litigation capacity. Legal clinics at Cornell and Yale have also been critical allies for Burke and RCFP in their LLI work in Pennsylvania, and she has also worked with solo practitioners and firms across the state. The Cornell clinic has now added a lawyer in Pittsburgh, who Burke helps supervise. Burke has herself argued cases on access to public records and public meetings in both state trial and appellate courts, and she has litigated LLI matters in all three of the Commonwealth’s federal district courts. 

Here is just a sampling of what the LLI has accomplished in Pennsylvania: 

• When The Caucus and Spotlight PA were investigating the campaign finance activities of the State Senate President, rather than charging standard copying fees, the senator’s accounting firm sought to impose thousands of dollars in prohibitively expensive fees for their employee’s time in making photocopies, and then filed a debt collection notice against the newsrooms’ reporter personally, a chilling move. Burke and colleagues got the case dismissed from state court as contrary to state campaign finance laws. 

• When Penn State trustees sought to evade open meeting laws by convening in secret, over the objections of Spotlight PA’s State College regional bureau, Burke filed a lawsuit in state court, ultimately reaching a settlement under which the trustees agreed to release more information about their private meetings and to engage in training on the provisions of the open meetings law. A separate public records request by Spotlight PA seeking records about Penn State trustees’ meetings resulted in an appeal by Penn State and the state Department of Education to the state’s Commonwealth Court. Burke, joined by colleagues at the Cornell First Amendment Clinic, successfully defended a lower agency’s determination in favor of Spotlight PA. Penn State and the Department of Education have now sought leave from the state’s highest court to hear the case. A decision is pending. 

• Burke successfully brought a lawsuit on behalf of LNP to force release of the autopsy records for former federal prosecutor Jonathan Luna, whose mysterious 2003 death in Brecknock Township was officially ruled a homicide, but for which no one has ever been charged, with federal investigators suggesting he may have taken his own life. Burke litigated the case to conclusion in state court, vindicating years of efforts by the newsroom to secure the records. 
• Calls to the legal hotline Burke offers are now coming in at a rate of about 150 per year, and range from urgent requests to help gain access to public records or officials proceedings to pleas for assistance from smaller news organizations with pre-publication review of stories. She has offered more than 25 training sessions over the last two years that have reached almost a thousand attendees. 

With all of this, it is hardly surprising that clients of Burke and the Reporters Committee are deeply appreciative. Christopher Baxter, CEO and president of Spotlight PA, said that “among many pilot projects” he has experienced in aid of newsroom work of all sorts, the LLI “is at the top of my list” and has been “hugely successful.” He called Burke “smart, responsible,” a “huge resource,” and appropriately aggressive. Baxter’s colleague Sarah Rafacz, who runs Spotlight PA’s State College bureau, called Burke “tenacious” and noted her “generosity with her time.”  

Tom Murse, executive editor at LNP, said he is “profoundly appreciative” for Burke’s RCFP work and added, “We couldn’t do what we do now” without her. In particular, Murse pointed out that each open records case Burke has brought on their behalf would have otherwise cost at least five figures in outside counsel fees, and that this assistance alone has freed up enough resources to allow LNP to afford another reporter.  

Teresa Bonner, senior director of content at PennLive, noted that “local governments are challenging us every day, seeking to limit public and press access to information,” and that “it would be much harder to respond without Paula’s efforts.” 

Lenfest Institute Executive Director and CEO Jim Friedlich said, “in Pennsylvania, the combination of national funding matched by local funding — and of an attorney of exceptional skill and dedication partnered with several intrepid local news organizations who understand the value and proper use of legal advice — has proved a powerful combination in the cause of press freedom.” 

None of this, of course, has gotten easier amid President Donald Trump’s constant attacks on the press, but Paula Knudsen Burke is unbowed. Tearing up in our conversation, she spoke admiringly of her clients’ “dogged bravery” and said she continues to be surprised by their resilience, especially in the face of physical threats and online harassment. Part of one of her trainings, she notes, now includes advice on how to wear a press badge in a way that doesn’t make the reporter vulnerable to strangulation. Across Pennsylvania, reporters and editors are benefiting not only from this gruesome advice, but from the broader reassurance that Burke and the Reporters Committee have their backs. 

Tofel, a retired press lawyer, was formerly president of ProPublica, and earlier assistant publisher of the Wall Street Journal. He writes the Second Rough Draft newsletter on Substack.