By Jonathan Make — Communications around the departure of Society of Professional Journalists Executive Director Alison Bethel McKenzie could have been handled better, SPJ’s elected President, Alex Tarquinio, told the public portion of a board meeting earlier this afternoon. Tarquinio confirmed that the initial, brief announcement came at around 10 or 11 p.m. last Monday. She also confirmed that further details about the resignation of the group’s staff head were first revealed in Tarquinio’s blog post 48 hours later.
“I’m sorry there was some problem with the execution” of the announcement, Tarquinio said toward the end of the virtual meeting. “The staff was spread very thin last week. They had a lot on their plate already.”
Looking ahead, Tarquinio and other directors committed to emailing all the approximately 7,000 members of the organization information on further developments during the leadership transition. Some people on the call said they didn’t get an all-member communication that was meant to have gone out last Wednesday night or Thursday morning in SPJ Leads.
“Instead of counting on Leads or the website, we really need to send more email blasts to members,” Tarquinio said. “We need to actually blast it out to members when we have news.” The message “was heard loud and clear that in this case, a separate email” announcing this would be better, she said. “We will use better judgment next time.”
The board member who in the fall will succeed Tarquinio as president defended the current president.
“Alex handled the decision as best could be handled” under the tight time frame, said Patricia Gallagher Newberry. “I agree that a full email blast to all members” on this topic “would have been the next best move.” So “as your board, we dropped the ball on that. We are just humans and we are inexperienced in this emergency situation,” continued Newberry, the president-elect. “We were not as good on that as we should have been.”
Some participants voiced displeasure that directors didn’t learn about Bethel McKenzie’s abrupt departure until the public announcement.
“I believe we should have been notified” beforehand, said director Lauren Bartlett. “I think its important for” members “to understand what the board knew when.” She noted that about 40% of members aren’t members of local SPJ chapters, and so they might not have heard that way.
The announcement came late at night because board members wanted to tell all SPJ headquarters staff about the news before they heard it elsewhere, they said. Tarquinio said her blog post with a lengthier discussion of Bethel McKenzie leaving wasn’t released until 48 hours after the initial announcement because it took Tarquinio that long to tell partners the group works with about the change.
No further details were given about who will lead or assist in the search for an interim executive director.
Tarquinio said that “we’ll announce that as soon as that person is selected” as temporary staff head. “That will be soon,” she predicted.
Tarquinio declined to provide more details than what was in her blog on the reason(s) why Bethel McKenzie left.
Assistant Region 3 Director Sharon Dunten said that Bethel McKenzie apparently “didn’t feel she was liked by members of the board sometimes.”
Bethel McKenzie declined to comment when asked after the meeting if she wished to respond.
By way of disclosure, I should note that I had organized a letter to the SPJ board seeking more transparency in how the departure announcement and transition have been handled so far.
You can read the actual letter to the board here. A number of chapter leaders and chapter boards have supported this request for transparency.
The first half hour of the roughly 65-minute call was dedicated to trying to fix technical glitches. Those glitches prevented some members of the public and also board members themselves from fully participating. There was confusion around whether those calling into the meeting could have speak on the call, or whether one had to use a third-party app to participate.
For instance, I participated on the call by calling a board member, Sue Kopen Katcef. She in turn connected her phone to the conference call app so my voice could be heard.