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The bill, which will allow reporters to protect their confidential sources, and protect any notes or unpublished materials unless disclosure is deemed legally necessary, will now go to Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson for a signature. The governor is expected to sign the bill in about a month, said Richard Gannon, governmental affairs for the Kansas Press Association.

"We're really pleased...this has been a fight for years and we've never been able to get it out of committee and it just so happens this year the stars were right," Gannon said.

Student Press Law Center Attorney Advocate Adam Goldstein said this legislation makes Kansas a front-runner in protecting student journalists.

"This legislation seems to adopt a functional view of journalism, which would protect all kinds of non-traditional news gatherers, including student journalists and bloggers. And that actually puts Kansas pretty much out front in protecting student journalists," Goldstein said.

A conference committee, made of three state senators and three representatives agreed on the language of the bill, which then went to both the Senate and House for votes. The Senate voted 39-1 in favor of the bill, and the House had only three dissenting votes, Gannon said.

The final language includes in its protections "an online journal in the regular business of newsgathering and disseminating news or information to the public." This part of the definition was somewhat controversial, Gannon said, and was not included in the original Senate Bill 211 from which House Bill 2585 was built.

The language of the final bill also changed a portion that defined when journalists must turn over information. Originally, the bill said information must be disclosed when the information "could not, after exercising due diligence, be obtained by alternative means," but now reads that it must be disclosed if the information "could not, after a showing of reasonable effort, be obtained by readily available alternative means," Gannon said.

Kansas courts had previously ruled that journalists had a "limited privilege" under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but the new law will clarify and strengthen that protection against forced disclosure.

"Naturally representing the newspapers we'd like to have had more, but I think we've got a pretty good piece of legislation," Gannon said.