Ben Holden

Ben Holden is a journalist, lawyer and media consultant to new judges. As a Los Angeles-based reporter he covered urban affairs and electric utility deregulation/consolidation for the Wall Street Journal. Representative stories included analyses of the aftermath of the Rodney King beating trial, the O.J. Simpson double murder case, and the Snoop Doggy Dogg murder trial. Holden later served as Editor in Chief of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, a McClatchy Co. daily newspaper. 

He practiced law with two firms in California during the late 1980s and early 1990s. He is currently licensed to practice in the states of California and Georgia and is the former director of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for the Courts & Media, an affiliate of the Reno, Nevada-based National Judicial College. Holden remains a visiting faculty member at the NJC. 

In 2021, Holden was the lead amici among a team of seven law professors who submitted to the United States Supreme Court a legal brief in the case Mahanoy v. B.L., analyzing the ability of schools to limit the social media speech rights of public K-12 students under the First Amendment. 

His media consulting work includes assignments in the former Yugoslavia (Kosovo) on behalf of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the U.S. State Department to aid judges, journalists, and public information officers in developing professional press coverage of the courts.

His scholarship focuses on the free speech rights of students at public primary and secondary schools. He is the author of a number of law review and related articles on these subjects. 

Holden earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. He earned his MBA and law degree from the University of California at Berkeley.