20 Years In The Making

By Mike DiSilvestro

What is today one of the most respected and well attended media law seminars in the country began as a small half day affair attended by local attorneys from Kansas City.  The first seminar was organized by the media law committee of the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association and few of those in attendance would have guessed at what the future held.  Jim Borelli, Vice President and Special Counsel for Media/Professional Insurance recalled, “Although we at Media/Pro had high hopes and big dreams for this seminar from its inception, we had no idea 20 years ago that this conference would become one of such high quality and prominence.”  Even then the talent and experience of the local bar attracted high quality speakers to the seminar. Leslie Stahl, then the CBS national affairs correspondent, was the first luncheon speaker. 

This year’s seminar on May 4 http://www.continuinged.ku.edu/programs/ml/ will take a look into the future.  “The past twenty years has seen so much change in the practice of representing media clients that we wanted to examine some of the foreseeable challenges that media lawyers will be facing in the future”, said Pat Groshong, program chair for this year’s seminar.  Some of the panel topics include how technology such as cell phone cameras will effect the local newsroom; how will privacy law be changed when there is a camera everywhere you go;  what does the future hold for copyright law and what are the insurance issues related to these challenges?  Speakers will include some of the top lawyers and journalists practicing today.  Our luncheon speaker will be the political cartoonist Scott Stantis from the Birmingham News.  Other speakers include Fred von Lohmann from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Bruce Sanford of Baker & Hostetler and Michael Sullivan of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz.

This year, for the first time, insurance agents and brokers can earn continuing education credits by attending the seminar.  3 hours of CE have been approved in Missouri and Kansas and approval is pending in Illinois, New York,California and Texas.  Borelli says, “We look forward to continuing to serving the media law and liability insurance communities by continuing to develop and provide many more outstanding programs in future years."

Media/Professional Insurance has been proud to be one of the sponsors of the seminar from the beginning.  We hope you can join us as we celebrate 20 years of great success!

Mike DiSilvestro is a Vice President - Underwriting at Media/Professional Insurance.