Long-time SPJ members recall organization’s influence during their careers
The Society of Professional Journalists turns 110 in 2019, and the year also marks 50 since women were first admitted into the organization. Sue Kopen Katcef, a 45-year SPJ member who joined when it was called Sigma Delta Chi, made a few announcements before the Jan. 26, 2019, DC Pro Membership Appreciation meeting’s longevity commemoration segment began. She is helping national SPJ gather ideas for how to celebrate the organization’s milestones this year, and asked those in attendance if they’d be willing to help with something centered on the 50-year milestone for women as members. There was not much interest in having an emphasis put on that particular date on the organization’s historical timeline, it turned out, and the lackluster response was noted.
But Katcef’s remarks ended up establishing a thread for the recognitions that followed.
A number of DC Pro Chapter members who reached 5- or 10-year milestones in their SPJ memberships during 2018 were honored at the meeting in Bethesda, Maryland, at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center. It was a sweet (literally!) time as we shared desserts and other goodies and reminisced with those honorees about long-time involvements with SPJ, with many of them tracing their initial days to a college chapter.
A member for 30 years, Stephenie Overman was DC Pro president in 1995-96, and moved to New Jersey and the West Coast for a while, leading chapters there, before returning to the DC area. She’s active here in DC and on the national SPJ level in assisting freelancers with a support network through regular lunch meeting at the National Press Club and the online freelance community.
Maurine Beasley, a past DC Pro chapter president (1990-91) and retired from the faculty of the journalism program at the University of Maryland at College Park, joined SPJ 40 years ago, 10 years after women were first admitted to the organization. In her own words: “I joined the national SPJ because I was a new faculty member at the College of Journalism at the University of Maryland and the dean, Ray Hiebert, told me and [another past chapter president,] Anne Nunamaker, also a new faculty member, to join. He thought it was important for faculty members to take part in SPJ.
I thank SPJ for helping me develop leadership ability. — Maurine Beasley
“I thank SPJ for helping me develop leadership ability. When I was president of the Washington chapter, I was so scared and uncertain of myself that I would stand up and walk around while I was trying to preside at board meetings. Finally one man, bless his heart, pointed out it was customary for the president to sit down. He was very tactful and assured me that the others were there to help me. I was a lot more comfortable after that.
“My most memorable experience came when I was chair of the [SPJ] National Historic Sites in Journalism Committee and worked to get a plaque honoring Anne Royall, the first woman to cover Congress, in the Capitol press galleries. Helen Dewar, the Washington Post reporter on the Hill, opposed the move on grounds that Royall, who ran two newspapers in Washington before the Civil War, has gone down in history as a freak and that she (Dewar) was a respected professional and did not want to be associated with a freak! Helen tried to sabotage the [1990] plaque and the ceremony. Only one woman journalist agreed to speak and that was Helen Thomas. Unlike Helen Dewar, Helen Thomas had a sense of history and realized how much woman had to overcome to succeed in journalism and that they stood on the shoulders of those who came before them.”
Another 40-year member, Barbara Hines, was to be in Australia and could not attend, but she sent a few words in response to her invitation to be recognized at the meeting: “It would have been fun to be there. My first membership with SPJ was when I was assistant dean at U of Maryland — ended up being an officer with the Maryland Pro chapter for a number of years. Gradually transitioned to DC chapter, then national membership. Many, many good friends from those years. SPJ provided such wonderful support to UMD and Howard University students and young professionals. Please share my gratitude. Hopefully I can attend in 2020.” Hines is professor emerita-journalism and founding chair of Communication, Culture & Media Studies at Howard University’s Cathy Hughes School of Communications.
Some 45-year members also could not join us, due to prior commitments. Gary Nurenberg, a television correspondent who has worked at WUSA Channel 9, said he was disappointed to miss the event because he’d be “out of town … teaching police officers in Mississippi how to foster better relations with the news media. Mostly, we spend three days saying ‘Don’t Lie!’
“What I remember most from being sworn in 45 years ago was having Ed Bliss [who received the DC Pro Chapter’s Distinguished Service Award in 2002] walk over and shake my hand, welcoming me to Sigma Delta Chi. It was a firm handshake and a welcoming smile. I admire Professor Bliss so much and, to this day, hear his voice when I’m about to take a stupid shortcut in a script. The voice stops me.”
Jim Bohannon, long-time Master of Ceremonies for the chapter’s annual Dateline Awards and Hall of Fame dinner, has moved to South Carolina, where he still hosts his late-night talk radio “The Jim Bohannon Show” on Westwood One. He could not make it to this meeting, but promises to continue his emceeing gig here in Washington in June.
He passed along his memories of being a 45-year member: “I can recall, as a new SPJ member, having the [National Press Club] balcony pointed out to me, where women journalists could “watch,” until just before I joined [SPJ]!
“By far my most significant memory is Freedom of Information Day. I’ve always done a lot of feature stories, and it was May 19, 1977, that I interviewed William “Bill the Dill” Moore, president of Pickle Packers International. He sent me all kinds of material about International Pickle Week, even including 8 x 10 glossy photos of pickles (which I couldn’t quite work into my radio reports!). It occurred to me then that, if pickles get a whole week, then surely something as important as freedom of information deserved at least a day. I eventually took this idea to the 1979 SPJ national convention in New York City, and presented it to President Jean Otto and the national SPJ board. I suggested we declare a National Freedom of Information Day, and that it be each March 16, birthday of James Madison, father of the Constitution. It was so adopted, and has been observed each March 16 starting in 1980.
I’ve greatly appreciated my membership. … We are a vital organization and should be proud of what we do.– Jim Bohannon
“In such an ephemeral business as radio, this may be one of my few enduring contributions to the profession. I’ve greatly appreciated my membership, the friendships, and the backing available whenever the First Amendment is challenged. We are a vital organization and should be proud of what we do.
“See you at the June awards dinner!”
Three other 45-year members did attend. There were more members marking 45 years in 2018 than those marking any of the other 5- and 10-year milestones.
Sue Kopen Katcef brought her induction certificate, and talked about being a journalist since 7th grade.
Wow. How is it possible? 45 (great) years with
@spj_tweets (starting as SDX). As the certificate here will attest it all began as a sophomore@UofMaryland. Thx, (photo credit)@SPJDC!@UMDSPJ@merrillcollege
Katcef, a journalism instructor at the University of Maryland, has long been involved on the national SPJ level with student SPJ chapters, serving on the national board as vice president for student chapter affairs. A resident of Annapolis, Maryland, she has also been very active in efforts to commemorate the journalists shot dead in their Annapolis Capital Gazette newsroom in June 2018, and to see that their surviving colleagues get the assistance they need. The University of Maryland student SPJ chapter sold “Not the Enemy” T-shirts, with proceeds benefiting a victims fund, and she helped organize a panel at the EIJ18 national convention in Baltimore in September 2018 that analyzed the trauma journalists experience in shooting situations or covering them, and offered practical advice for those who want to prepare to react if they find themselves in such situations or who need counseling and support aftward.
She tweeted from the event, too (here) and (here).
Thank YOU, Sue!
She’s a past president of the Maryland Pro Chapter, and a past board member of DC Pro.
Jim Schoonmaker said that he became a member of the DC Pro Chapter in 2008 when he moved to the area from Atlanta, where he was a member of the pro chapter starting in 1980. In Atlanta, he was a chapter board member and Green Eyeshade Awards committee member, “which included supervising the annual production of those plaques!” Green Eyeshade is a large regional journalism award competition, and in the past proceeds were such that SPJ Region 2 (Maryland, Delaware, D.C., Virginia and North Carolina) got a cut from them.
Schoonmaker has served on the DC Pro financial Audit Committee for the past two years, and assured he’s available for the task in 2019 as well.
And also a 45-year member is Sandy Kozel, an anchor at WTOP radio, a relatively new gig after a long career as an anchor and correspondent with the Associated Press, until leaving in 2017.
Prior to coming to the D.C. market in 1986 and becoming a DC Pro Chapter member soon after, she worked in local radio in the Cleveland (her hometown) area– and in Buffalo, New York (1979-1986).
She was at WEOL-AM, in Elyria, Ohio, 1975-1979 as an anchor, reporter, assistant news director. She talked about coming out of college and trying to get a job in her hometown market, after proving herself while still an undergraduate with working internships. It was still a time when young women were not expected to be embarking on careers, and the station director was reluctant to give her a job. What would he tell her father if something happened to her while she was covering a night event? She assured him that she would deal with her father. She was eventually hired, but moving up the management chain was hard, despite her obvious accomplishments, leading her to move to New York for a new opportunity. She said she is grateful that women in the business have proven, like her, themselves and made it easier for those who have followed.
Though not active in the many activities of the chapter, she said she also appreciates the work it does on behalf of all journalists.
Just the slightest hint of controversy emerged with Frank Aukofer‘s recognition: According to the national SPJ membership database, he passed the 60-year membership milestone in 2018, but he’d told event organizer Amy Fickling, chapter treasurer and corresponding secretary, before the event that he was “still pretty sure I joined SPJ in 1955 or 1956 as a student at the Marquette University College of Journalism. I joined the DC Pro Chapter in 1970 when The Milwaukee Journal sent me to the Washington bureau.”
In fact, when Aukofer read about the membership recognitions set for January 2018, a year ago, he emailed that the meeting notices listing the members with long-time membership milestones reached in 2017 had “prompted me to look up mine. I’ve been an SPJ member for 62 years. I joined in 1955 when I was a student at the Marquette University College of Journalism. Back then, I could have gotten a lifetime membership for, I think, less than $100. Of course, I couldn’t afford it so have been paying annual dues ever since, including adding D.C. professional chapter dues since 1970, when I arrived here as a correspondent for The Milwaukee Journal, so 47 of those 62 years were as a chapter member.”
Aukofer is a member of the DC Pro Chapter Hall of Fame, and is a past president of the National Press Club (1978). He has a distinguished resume, but modestly did not mention many of his accomplishments. He did mention he has a wife, two daughters and seven granddaughters, and is very proud of what they have accomplished in life.
Said he started out his journalism career writing obits for The Milwaukee Journal, and then wrote the obit for the paper as it merged to become the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
DC Pro was the grateful recipient of office space in The Milwaukee Journal’s bureau in the National Press Building, a gift from Aukofer while he was in charge, and used it to house its answering machine and computer and printer from which it produced the Dateline newsletter in print form.
Is it 60 years or 63 years? Some other members in attendance think the records at national don’t accurately reflect their number of years of membership. We’re just glad that Frank was able to attend and receive his certificate, with grace and humor.
Also marking 60 years of SPJ membership in 2018 is Frank Quine, retired assistant dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland who received the DC Pro Distinguished Service Award in 2014. He’s also treasurer of the DC Pro SDX Foundation of Washington, D.C., the chapter’s education arm that awards scholarships to local college students who intend to make journalism their profession upon graduation. He has a grandson who was celebrating a birthday on Jan. 26, so Quine decided he’d celebrate that instead of picking up another honor for himself, but did send along his appreciation for the recognition.
And the only member with 65 years of membership in 2018 is David Mazie, who lives close by the Bethesda venue where the meeting was held and was happy to travel the short distance to attend. He sent a summary of his remarks and thoughts afterward: “My relationship with SPJ goes back to a time when it was SDX. I was invited to join after my junior year at Northwestern (1954) and served as the chapter president the following year. That brief period left me with my greatest appreciation for the Society: I admire and cheer its early and lasting involvement with young journalists and journalists-to-be, whether it be education, ethics, job assistance, whatever.
… my greatest appreciation for the Society: I admire and cheer its early and lasting involvement with young journalists and journalists-to-be, whether it be education, ethics, job assistance, whatever. — David Mazie
“My own career was pretty much limited to two stops. I spent almost a decade at the Minneapolis Tribune, writing about politics, education and interesting people from the Upper Midwest. However, I did get away for a year as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and two years as the Tribune’s first (and as it turned out, last) Latin American correspondent, based in Rio de Janeiro. After my return from South America in 1968, I wanted to work in Washington. Since the Trib had no openings in the bureau, I went to work with Carl Rowan, whom I had sat next to in the Tribune newsroom and who was then starting his own syndicated column and radio commentary. In addition, we wrote dozens of magazine articles together over the years. I remained somewhat active in SDX/SPJ in Minneapolis and Washington, but not as much as I had been at Northwestern.
“I retired in 2000 and miss the excitement and pride of being a working journalist, but not the stress. Truth is, I don’t think I could be a successful journalist today. I still feel more comfortable at a typewriter than a computer and as a don’t-take-sides reporter than an advocate. But I don’t regret a moment of my career (well, maybe one or two) and I thank SDX/SPJ for helping along the way.”
Check out p. 39 of 54 in this pdf file of documents in the Gerald Ford Presidential Library. It lists meetings of the president with various media. Mazie is among several distinguished Washington columnists who met in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Oct. 14, 1975, including past chapter president and former emcee of the Dateline Awards dinner Alan Emory. The entire document is a reminder of just how many different media outlets had reporters in Washington in the post-Watergate era. And points to what appears to be much greater media access to the president.
Congratulations and thanks for their membership also go to Ben Leubsdorf and Pat McGrath (10 years) and Carole Feldman (5 years), who responded to their invitation saying they couldn’t attend but appreciated the honors. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who was inducted into the DC Pro Hall of Fame in 2013, also marked 5 years of SPJ membership.
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Scenes from the meeting
The SPJ DC Pro Chapter met at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center near the Bethesda Metro station. The facility is operated by the Montgomery County, Maryland, government for community use and services.
