Experienced journalists know that a press credential is often critical to gaining physical or virtual access to news events and information. It's an aspect of information access rarely covered by the news media themselves. Now a new report from the Digital Media Law Project at Harvard looks systematically at who gets a press card and who does not.

The findings are discouraging to those who want access in a rapidly changing media landscape. In a nutshell, credentials more often go to the old-school traditional media representatives of newspaper and television outlets. Freelancers and photographers were less likely to get credentials than others were.

• "Who Gets a Press Pass?" [2] Digital Media Law Project, June 11, 2014, by Jeffrey Hermes, John Wihbey, Reynol Junco, and Osman Tolga Aricak. Release. [3]