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UPDATED 3/14/13 4:25 p.m.

A housekeeping matter has turned into an exhausting effort to preserve a five-year-old law protecting journalists from being forced to reveal their sources and turn over their notes.

“The public’s right to know is at stake,” University of Hawaii journalism professor Gerald Kato told Civil Beat.

A coalition of media outlets set out in January to simply make the state’s Shield Law permanent by removing its sunset provision. But three months and a few House amendments later, the group is faced with a watered-down version of the original bill and an uncertain future in the Senate.

is now in the hands of the Judiciary and Labor Committee, chaired by Sen. Clayton Hee.

Hee did not return a message seeking comment on whether he plans to hear the bill. If he doesn’t hold a hearing on it by April 4, it will die in committee and Hawaii will become one of the only states without a Shield Law.

CORRECTION: A coalition of media outlets is concerned that one of the compromises it may have to make to get the bill passed is amending it to no longer protect non-traditional journalists such as bloggers and documentary filmmakers.

That protection means the world to Keoni Alvarez, one of the only people in the state to ever use the Shield Law in court to successfully fight off a subpoena.

As part of a documentary on Native Hawaiian burial practices and belief systems, Alvarez filmed a protest on Kauai over a landowner’s plan to build a home on top of iwi kupuna.

A Kauai judge in 2009 rejected the landowner’s attempt to force Alvarez to turn over his raw video footage, notes, hard drives and a long list of other materials related to the documentary because the information was protected under the Shield Law.

Also known as Act 210, the Shield Law has not been tested in court since then. Media experts and First Amendment attorneys say this is evidence that the law works and should remain unchanged.

Alvarez said Monday that if he was unable to give the sources of his documentary certain guarantees about what information and footage would be published, they would not have shared their stories with him and it would have killed the project.

“Keoni is the classic case of a person who is not a traditional journalist,” Kato said. “Had he been forced to turn over this information, it would’ve been a chilling effect on him and his sources. Ultimately, the information would not have seen the light of day.”

Alvarez said PBS is expected to air his documentary sometime next year.

“There’s a growing number of people doing this non-traditional kind of work,” Kato said. “I don’t think anyone who shoots video and puts it on YouTube considers themselves a journalist, but some do and they try to provide the public with information about some aspect of public life or public concern that is of interest.”

Jeff Portnoy, a prominent First Amendment attorney in Honolulu, said he could live with the Shield Law not protecting non-traditional journalists. While his preference is just setting the current law in stone, he said keeping the protections for traditional journalists may be better than nothing.

There’s also the possibility that lawmakers will further amend the already watered-down bill, in which case nothing might be better than something.

The law will expire June 30 unless legislators take action.

Before the bill crossed over to the Senate in February, House lawmakers amended it to broaden the exceptions in which journalists have to disclose their sources.

Currently, Hawaii reporters only have to reveal their sources if there’s enough evidence that the source or protected information is critical to an investigation, a felony case or a defamation case.

But the bill that cleared the Judiciary Committee widened the exemptions to include potential felonies or serious crimes involving injury to persons or animals. Journalists could also be compelled to produce information for any civil action — not just defamation cases.

The attorney general’s office supports changing the Shield Law to exclude bloggers and non-traditional journalists.

There’s no definition in the law for blogger or “non-traditional journalist.”

The office also doesn’t want the law to protect unpublished information that isn’t likely to lead to the identification of a source.

The Hawaii Shield Law Coalition, which includes the Society for Professional Journalists and Media Council Hawaii, worked for months to mobilize news outlets for this session. Civil Beat and other local news outlets are also participating in the coalition.