I’ve posted a lengthy piece at OnQ Social Media discussing most of the issues going this week regarding Twitter and the trial of Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon. There seems to be some factionalism going on among some of the media people there who are using Twitter and ones who aren’t (mainly the Baltimore Sun.)

It will be interesting to see what repercussions this has for the rest of the current trial and for Dixon’s next trial on perjury charges. The impact of the Twitter usage in this trial could be far-reaching across the U.S. as it relates to restrictions on trial coverage and new technology.

The post I wrote at the link above is one I went out of my way to be fair on to all sides involved. If anyone involved has any further comments you can leave a comment below, on the linked post, or send an email to mail@insidecharmcity.com or jeff@onqsm.com and we will make sure your unfiltered position is heard.

Update: It does appear that there was a protocol banning the use of phones by the media prior to the trial. The original post I made has more.

Update 2: I also got a reply from Justin Fenton of the Sun about the post and ran his reply unedited on the link above.

Update 3 This issue has also been mentioned at The Volokh Conspiracy.

The Baltimore Sun has also made a Twitter list of people tweeting from the courtroom.

I took the MARC train down to DC this morning (and I’m riding the train now back to Baltimore) to attend the 40th Anniversary Conference for Accuracy in Media. In the interests of full disclosure, I was an intern with Accuracy in Academia (which is affiliated with AIM) in the fall of 1993 when I was a student at Georgetown.

I’ve provided full coverage on the new media portions of various speakers and panel discussions at the blog for OnQ Social Media Consulting (a consulting firm I recently started up.)

The most in-depth post from the event is one I made on the new media panel that took place this afternoon. You can go back and follow Twitter feeds of all the panels and speakers via the #aim09 hashtag.