The Chicago Tribune reports that the paper and its arch-rival, the Chicago Sun-Times, have banded together to protest the closed-door proceedings in the R. Kelly child-sex trial:

The emergency motion requests that Judge Vincent Gaughan make all Kelly-related court records public, release transcripts of several secret hearings and lift the gag order on the attorneys involved in the upcoming trial. Gaughan has been holding discussions with lawyers behind closed doors for months, usually in the privacy of his chambers.

The Sun-Times version is here, though neither story has much else information. Based on something garnered from a court filing by a Sun-Times reporter last week, it’s thought that at least part of the closed-door discussions have to do with whether or to what extent information about R. Kelly’s extravagant  history of sexual involvement with children will be allowed in the trial. It’s presumed the judge is trying not to taint the jury pool by keeping those discussions under wraps. From the Trib story:

“Pretrial publicity is never a legitimate, let alone a compelling reason for closure,” the motion states. “The United States Supreme Court has made abundantly clear that a trial court’s concerns that potential jurors may be prejudiced by media coverage of pre-trial proceedings does not justify holding them [in private].”

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Previously in Hitsville:

R. Kelly SexFacts™ Complete—The Director’s Cut!
Why the secrecy in the R. Kelly case?
Secret hearings in the R. Kelly case