The Star-Advertiser reports today that a circuit court judge is “leaning towards” ordering the city to pay the newspapers legal costs in a lawsuit seeking public disclosure of the tapes of 911 calls during a June 3 shooting incident that left one person dead and two wounded.

In response to the suit, the city has reportedly agreed to release several tapes, but is still trying to block release of others.

The S-A reports:

City Deputy Corporation Counsel Edwin Nomura said that upon review of the case, the city agreed to release five tapes.

Wait. You mean they didn’t bother to review the law before rejecting requests for disclosure? No, what I think they really mean is that they decided to stonewall as long as they could get away with it.

In any case, the Star-Advertiser should get credit for pursuing disclosure in court. Holding agencies accountable, and forcing them to pay the legal costs, appears to be a necessary part of getting them to pay attention to the law. But the S-A sadly continues to lock the story of its success in this regard behind a pretty solid paywall that prevents spreading the word. If not for that sturdy paywall, I would have included a link to the story about the case. Instead, I’ll have to wait until Civil Beat covers the case. At least their paywall is semi-permeable, with some information freely accessible.

The rigid paywall strategy is one approach to monetizing the newspaper’s product, but it seems to conflict with the equally valid need to market and sell the news. Somehow “new media” consumers need to become newspaper consumers, and the paywall, at least the rigid version of it, appears to make that unlikely.

I should mention that I have been reading the S-A’s e-edition on my iPad every morning. This is the version that is a digital replica of the print edition, and allows the reader to easily focus on individual articles while moving through the pages and sections. I find it a fuller experience than the online edition, perhaps because the S-A doesn’t routinely utilize the full potential of online news to provide more of the story.

The e-edition can be read using the S-A’s own iPad or iPhone app by PressReader, which offers its own app with a list of nearly 2,000 global newspapers, all accessible for a flat $29.95 per month fee. There are limits. Only five newspapers can be set for automatic download, and only two weeks of back issues can be saved on your own computer. But it looks like a real deal for news junkies!