Mr. Goodale is recognized as one of the leading First Amendment and communications lawyers in the United States. He appears frequently on television as a commentator on media and communication issues and has his own television program, Digital Age, (formerly, The Telecommunications and Information Revolution). It can be seen on PBS's WNYE-TV/Channel 25 in New York City, which goes to most cable stations in a 50 mile radius of NYC including Long Island, Westchester and Connecticut. It is also on DirecTV's Ch. 888 (NJ), DirecTV's Ch. 25 (NY and CT), Dish-TV and is webcast on www.digitalage.org.
James Goodale is the former Vice Chairman of The New York Times where he also served as its General Counsel. He represented the Times in the Pentagon Papers case and led the Times' legal team in that case. The Times' regular outside counsel, Lord, Day & Lord, refused to represent the Times since its senior partner, Herbert Brownell, the former Attorney General of the United States, disagreed with Mr. Goodale's advice that the Pentagon Papers could be published under the First Amendment. Mr. Goodale assembled a new legal team overnight and directed the strategy for the case which resulted in a resounding victory for The New York Times in the Supreme Court. According to Second Circuit Judge Robert Sack, who reviewed the book The Day the Press Stopped: The History of the Pentagon Papers, " Goodale is portrayed in the book as one of the heroes of the affair."
Following the decision by the Supreme Court, Mr. Goodale set about organizing a First Amendment Bar to defend the press. Before Mr. Goodale's effort, there had been no such bar since most cases of this nature were handled by the American Civil Liberties Union. His seminar, Communications Law, at the Practising Law Institute, which provides education for lawyers in defense of the First Amendment, is one of the largest legal seminars in the U.S. and celebrates its 35th anniversary in November 2007.
Trained as a Wall Street lawyer, he spearheaded The New York Times Company's effort to become a diversified communications company. He created the Company's Class A & B voting structure and conceived a going-public strategy that permitted the Company to use Class A stock for acquisitions. A $100 million Company when this effort began, it is now a diversified $3 billion Company.
As Executive Vice President and Vice Chairman of the Company, he was a member of the Company's Executive Committee with responsibility for management of the parent Company, particulary with respect to its diversification efforts. As such he became knowledgeable about old line media such as tv, magazines and books, and the new media, including one of the first on-line services, The New York Times Information Bank.
Upon leaving the Times in 1980, he became a partner in the prominent New York City law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton and established two practice groups, one for the representation of media companies, particularly new media companies such as cable television, the other for First Amendment and intellectual property litigation. This practice involves the representation of communications companies (including entertainment companies) worldwide and engages 40-45 lawyers.
His clients have included The New York Times, George Plimpton, Harry Evans, Tina Brown, Margaret Truman, Infinity Broadcasting (now CBS), the New York Observer, Channel 13 (NYC's PBS station), the New York Law Journal, the National Law Journal, Bantam Books, Time magazine, Newsday, The Hill, Chuck Dolan, Cablevision Systems Company, News 12, Hedrick Smith and The Paris Review.
He has been called the father of the "Reporter's Privilege," the privilege that permits reporters not to disclose sources and other unpublished information. His article in the Hastings Law Journal of January 1975 has in part spawned over 500 reported cases involving the recognition of such a privilege and has been instrumental in the creation of shield law statutes in many states including New York. He represented The New York Times in the landmark reporter's privilege case in the Supreme Court, Branzburg v. U.S.
He has written two books on the First Amendment, The New York Times v. The U.S. and All About Cable, and over 150 articles on the First Amendment, particularly on the role of the press in the Information Revolution, which have been published in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, the Nation, the Nieman Report, the New York Law Journal and National Law Journal. All About Cable has been cited twice by the U.S. Supreme Court. He has been a law school professor since 1977 and has served on the faculties of Yale and NYU Law Schools. He is presently on the faculty of Fordham Law School where he has taught, since 1986, a course entitled Old Media, New Media, The Internet And The First Amendment.
At his suggestion, Yale and the Ford Foundation started the Master of Studies in Law/Journalism Program for journalists specializing in law who wish to spend one year at Yale Law School. The program was inaugurated in 1976 and for 27 years attracted distinguished journalists to Yale Law School. Over 100 journalists completed this Program including Linda Greenhouse, the Supreme Court correspondent of The New York Times.
While at the Times he conceived, along with Fred Friendly and Stuart Sucherman, the Media and Society Seminars which subsequently became a PBS program in 1984. He and Joe Califano, the former head of H.E.W., ran the first two programs for The New York Times and The Washington Post respectively. He presently practices law at Debevoise & Plimpton and is the host/producer of Digital Age, a television program originating on WNYE-TV in New York City, New York's second PBS station, which is seen on most local cable systems within a 50 mile radius of the City. Columbia Journalism Review, 2001, named Mr. Goodale and the program as one of 200 who shape the media agenda in New York City. The program, which was started 20 years ago by Jake Trobe and Michael Botein of New York Law School, deals with policy issues in media and society raised by the Information Revolution. Mr. Goodale took over the program in 1995 and his guests have included Ben Bradlee, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., Walter Cronkite, Tom Wicker, Arthur Schlesinger, Art Buchwald, Hedrick Smith, Robert MacNeil, Henry Kissinger, Dan Rather, James Woolsey and Michael Bloomberg.
As counsel to George Plimpton, he conceived the idea of turning The Paris Review, which Plimpton founded, into a foundation. The Paris Review Foundation, Inc., formed in 2001, now publishes the Review, which is one of the few literary journals to survive the death of its founder. Mr. Goodale serves on its Board and is Secretary of the Foundation.
In 1992 he was the Chairman of the New York State Judicial Commission on Minorities which concluded the New York Judicial system was "infested with racism, and led to a long dispute between the Commission and New York's then-Chief Judge Sol Wachtler.
He is the past Chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and is generally credited with raising the profile of a small human rights organization to a powerful press organization which has assisted in releasing many foreign journalists from prisons. Its Board Members include Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, Anthony Lewis and Kati Marton. He continues to serve on the CPJ Board and is also on, or has been on, the Boards of The New York Times Company, Citizens Utility Company (where he headed its Strategic Planning Committee), the International Center for Foreign Journalists, The New York Times Foundation, the 100 Neediest Cases Foundation, Salzburg Seminar, Federal Bar Council and Human Rights Watch.
A skating enthusiast before and after his days as a Yale hockey player, he became the owner of Sky Rink, Manhattan's only full size indoor rink, took it out of bankruptcy and ran it "pro bono" for the benefit of New York City skaters. The rink and its predecessor had been the training center for national and Olympic champions Dick Button, Carole Hess, Dorothy Hammill, Elaine Zayak and Kyoko Ono. After persuading Roland Betts to take over the rink, Betts moved it to Chelsea Piers where it became the keystone of the $100 million Chelsea Piers recreation center, one of NYC's most visited public places. Also an active youth hockey coach, he founded a youth hockey program in NW Connecticut which has taught skating and hockey to over 1000 kids.
He has been named by publications variously as "one of the most powerful lawyers in the U.S.," "one of the future leaders of the U.S." (Time) and one of America's "best lawyers." He is a 1955 graduate of Yale, which he attended on the Brinckerhoff-Jackson Scholarship and a 1958 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School where he held a National Honor Scholarship. He served for six years in the Army Reserve as a strategic and intelligence research analyst.
Mr. Goodale is married to the former Toni Krissel of New York City who is President of the New York City fund-raising firm, T.K. Goodale Associates. They are the parents of Tim (a founding partner of Fusion Capital Management, London), Ashley (Office of Legal Counsel, NYC) and the foster parents of Clayton Akiwenzie, a Native American (with Wells Fargo, San Francisco, where he supervises loans to low-income housing developers).
He can be reached at Debevoise & Plimpton, 919 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022; tel: 212 909 6253; Fax: 212 909 6836; jcgoodal@debevoise.com
James Goodale is listed in Who's Who
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