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Pennsylvania

The Local Legal Initiative provides local news organizations with direct legal services to pursue enterprise and investigative stories in their communities.

In Pennsylvania, Local Legal Initiative Attorney Paula Knudsen Burke has helped journalists and news organizations across the state increase government transparency and accountability. She has represented local journalists and newsrooms in lawsuits against townships, counties, state agencies, universities, and more, prying loose public records that have fueled impactful investigative reporting, including stories about Pennsylvania’s medical marijuana program, a prison contractor’s wrongful-death settlements, and a public transit agency’s failure to track incidents of sexual assault and harassment targeting its employees.

Burke has also helped local journalists and newsrooms reach legal settlements that forced a county to revise its jail policies on interactions with the news media, improved public access to criminal court records, and required a township to train its employees on the government’s obligations under the state’s public records law.

In 2024, Burke received the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association’s Benjamin Franklin Award for Excellence, which recognizes individuals who have performed an outstanding service to their newspaper, to the news media industry in general, to their local community, or to PNA that reflected positively on the news media industry in Pennsylvania.

Learn more about the Local Legal Initiative’s impact in other states.

Our Pennsylvania Attorney

Paula Knudsen Burke Senior Supervising Attorney, Pennsylvania

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