SPJ DC Pro board member attends first national SPJ convention

 Published Date: October 21, 2018

Impressions after attending my first SPJ convention

By Randy Showstack

The annual SPJ national convention in Baltimore lived up to its name, “Excellence in Journalism,” for this first-time convention attendee. Accompanied by more than 1,100 other skilled, dedicated and inspiring journalists, I took advantage of the wide selection of topics covered by taking in as many breakout sessions, supersessions, SPJ meetings and other conference programming as time and the overlap in scheduling allowed.

Highlights for me included breakout sessions on newsgathering, digital tools, management and other topical areas featured at EIJ18, which was co-sponsored by the Radio-Television Digital News Association. The breakout sessions that stood out for me included the Thursday, Sept. 27, discussion on “Getting Reluctant Sources on the Record,” featuring past national SPJ president Lynn Walsh, project manager at the Trusting News Project, and LinkedIn news editor Andrew Seaman, who was completing his tenure as SPJ’s national Ethics Committee chair.

Another cool session was “Al’s Cool Tools,” led by Al Tompkins, member of the senior faculty for broadcasting and online at the Poynter Institute. Tompkins dazzled attendees with some new digital tools including InVid (a platform to help verify web-posted video) and Juxtapose (which lets you build before and after slides). He’s posted a list of some of those tools on his Web site here.

A supersession with CBS News “On the Road” correspondent Steve Hartman was touching and enlightening. Hartman has crafted so many memorable broadcast stories, including, for instance, the story of a friendship between an 82-year-old widower and a 4-year-old girl that began with their chance encounter in a supermarket aisle. Hartman took the audience behind the scenes as he showed some of his segments and described what it took to make them.

Other highlights included an emotional supersession on “Surviving the Unthinkable,” which focused on this summer’s deadly shooting assault at the Capital Gazette newspaper office in Annapolis, Maryland, and some breakout sessions focused on in-depth forays into using the Freedom of Information Act and suppression of information access. Click on links to read more about some of these.

@trifalatzas Trif Alatzas, editor in chief of the Baltimore Sun Media Group, which includes the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis (on the right); Gina Cavallaro, staff writer @ARMYMAGofficial (on the left); and Bruce Shapiro of @DartCenter (joined via Skype).

In addition to this being my first time attending an SPJ national convention, it was also my first time as a DC Pro chapter delegate to a convention. In that capacity, I attended the SPJ business meetings during the Sept. 27-29 convention. It was a fascinating and energizing experience reviewing and voting on different items of business. Of the 12 resolutions voted on during the Saturday, Sept. 29, business meeting, seven — including one thanking SPJ headquarters staff for a successful EIJ18 — passed easily all at once as a block.

One resolution (which ultimately was not approved) involving a change to our name, from the Society of Professional Journalists to the Society for Professional Journalism, took up much of the discussion time during the meeting.

DC Pro Chapter delegate Kathleen Burns (seen on right in photo below) spoke against it, as did past national SPJ president Kevin Smith. Smith argued that two years ago, two-thirds of SPJ members surveyed were opposed to a name change, and that the organization should move on to more important issues. DC Pro Chapter member Sue Kopen Katcef, not a convention delegate but a member of the national board as vice president for campus chapter affairs, was allowed by the convention delegates to speak on the floor. She encouraged delegates to support the resolution, saying that after all her years as an SPJ member (since 1973) she has come around to realizing that the organization’s survival depends on including supporters of SPJ’s missions, not just professional journalist members.

At one point during the long and passionate discussion about that issue, during which many delegates lined up at the microphone to comment, a delegate called to cut off debate. Although I sided with those in favor or retaining our current name, I voted against limiting debate because I wanted to hear more and learn more from both sides before voting on the resolution.

After my experiences at this year’s convention, I am looking forward to hearing more and learning more at future SPJ conventions, including the one next year in San Antonio and in 2020 when it comes back to Washington, D.C.

 

DC Pro Vice President Randy Showstack at the Region 2 meeting Saturday, Sept. 29, during EIJ18 in Baltimore, attending his first national SPJ convention. (Photos by Amy Fickling)

Randy Showstack is vice president of SPJ DC Pro Chapter. He received a certificate for 20 years of SPJ membership at the membership meeting held in January 2018, at which those with 5-year-interval milestones reached in 2017 were recognized. He also joined the board at that meeting, and then was elected vice president in the April 2018 election.