http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2016/04/14/indiana-law-blog-back-online-monday/83024214/
The Indiana Law Blog, which was recently shut down because of lack of funding, has found a sponsor and will be back online Monday, the blog’s creator told IndyStar.
The Indianapolis law firm Hoover Hull Turner will fund the long-running legal blog with the goal of keeping it online indefinitely, said Wayne Turner, a partner at the law firm, which will be the blog’s exclusive sponsor.
The announcement comes a little more than a month after retired Indianapolis lawyer Marcia Oddi said she was ending the blog she created 13 years ago because “financial support simply isn’t there.” Oddi said she had unsuccessfully spent the past year exploring funding options for the blog, which went offline April 1.
Turner said his law firm reached out to Oddi after reading an IndyStar story about the blog shutting down. He and Oddi “shook hands across the breakfast table this morning,” Turner said Thursday, adding they will have a formal written agreement later.
“A lot of lawyers, especially those of us who practice in the litigation area, followed the law blog as a resource and were really troubled and concerned to see that it might end,” Turner said. “We contacted Marcia to try to find out how we could help. Someone needed to step up and keep the blog alive.”
Dubbed the Indiana policy version of the Drudge Report, the Indiana Law Blog is an abundant repository of legal and political news in Indianapolis and beyond, its readers say. It’s a one-stop resource that provides lawyers, judges, politicians, journalists and laypeople fingertip access to the most recent court orders, opinions, case summaries, hearing schedules, analysis and commentary posted every day.
Turner declined to share further details, including how much his law firm will provide to cover the costs for the blog.
“We are still in the process of working out everything with Marcia,” he said. “We’ve certainly taken steps to make sure it continues for quite some time. We’ll be looking at ways to best establish it as a continuing operation.”
In a post a few years ago, Oddi wrote that the Indiana Law Blog’s yearly budget is less than 7 percent — or roughly $35,000 — of the annual cost to run SCOTUSblog, a national blog that focuses on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Oddi declined to talk about specifics of the costs.
She said she started the blog on March 16, 2003, to put a spotlight on the courts, to show the public that the law affects day-to-day lives and is not limited to court decisions and statutes, and to spark new ideas and ways of doing things.
She will resume her role as the main author of the Indiana Law Blog. When it goes online Monday, it will have content from the last two weeks that the blog was offline, Oddi said.
Turner said he expects some members of his law firm to also be contributors to the blog.
