Shannon Jankowski ’17 remembers being in law school and having a conversation with a practicing attorney who asked her what courses she enjoyed. When she mentioned First Amendment Law, he had some discouraging words for her.
“‘Everybody thinks they’re going to be a First Amendment lawyer, but a very small percentage end up doing that’,” she recalls him saying.
“I know these jobs aren’t everywhere,” she adds. “And I feel incredibly lucky that things fell into place to allow me to follow that career path.”
Now a fierce defender of First Amendment rights, Jankowski has championed media outlets and journalists throughout her law career including during her time at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and PEN America.
“It’s fighting for the First Amendment rights of the press to access courts and government records,” Jankowski says about her work. “It’s advocating for the rights of journalists to cover protests including the right to record the police in the public performance of their duties. Access issues are the bread and butter of a media lawyer’s work, in my experience. That such a fundamental tenet of our democracy must be fought for over and over again, was, to me, one of the most surprising aspects of the work.”
Jankowski’s first job out of law school was as an associate attorney with Faegre Baker Daniels, where she focused on trademark, copyright, advertising and media law. In 2019, she moved to Washington, D.C., to be the first E.W. Scripps Legal Fellow with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and later became a staff attorney at the organization. She went from direct litigation to leading its amicus practice.
“I had this extraordinary opportunity to be immersed in media and First Amendment law and to work alongside incredible attorneys,” she says. It was an amazing crash course, and I just soaked in as much as I possibly could.
She remembers the Reporters Committee Legal Hotline flooded with calls from members of the media during the protests that took place after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
“We did a lot of training at that time around safety for journalists covering protests,” she recalls. There were many restrictions on the rights of the press to cover these protests that went beyond just trying to keep the press safe or the public safe; they were encroaching on the press' First Amendment rights. Much of the work we were doing then was reaching out to jurisdictions, contacting local police, and having conversations with them about the First Amendment rights of the press in addition to representing or facilitating legal support for many of these journalists.”
In 2023, Jankowski went to PEN America, first as a program director and then as interim director of U.S. Free Expression Programs, where she led a team focused on supporting First Amendment free expression rights, including press freedom, protest rights and media literacy.
“One of the issues we focused on at PEN was the impact of disinformation on journalists,” she says. “It has eroded public trust and created an environment that makes it extremely difficult for journalists to do their jobs.”
Former University of Minnesota law professor Heidi Kitrosser, who had Jankowski in a First Amendment Law class, says attorneys in this field are crucial since the press is constantly under attack on many levels, from physical threats to the funding of “frivolous” lawsuits.
“Shannon is someone who I consider a success story in terms of both having a career that she seems to love and one where she gets to focus on something that's hard to break into,” says Kitrosser, who is William W. Gurley Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. “What Shannon is doing is so important, and I’m proud to have a former student who's decided to make a career in protecting freedom of the press and free speech.”
A desire to keep growing
Jankowski’s path to law school wasn’t traditional. After earning her bachelor's degree in theater, she acted in Twin Cities theater productions for several years while supplementing her income working as a paralegal. In time, she decided to make the transition to law school and focus on a full-time legal career.
“Even though I was coming to the law school with different life and work experiences from many of my classmates, I always felt accepted and welcomed,” she says. “It was this wonderful feeling of we're all in this together, and we're all going to rise and fall together.
“I was challenged personally in new ways, in terms of how I think about the law, how I approached my view of success and failure, and how to navigate those two things,” she continues. “I became more aware that I could adapt and grow in ways I hadn’t realized.”
In May of this year, Jankowski moved into a different area of media law, this time as associate general counsel at Twin Cities Public Television (TPT). In addition to advising on production-related matters, including copyright and music licensing, she continues to wear her First Amendment hat, providing legal reviews for the station’s news and documentary productions.
“First Amendment law is where my heart is,” she says. “As I grow in my career, I want to continue to advocate for journalists and media companies and to keep challenging myself to learn new aspects of the work. At TPT, I get to explore another side of media law. This time from inside a media company working alongside producers and writers to help them bring their vision to life and to share their stories with the public.”