Vol. 4, No. 4 July/August 2019
Inside this issue:
-Member survey online through Aug. 15 — your chance to shape org’s future
-SPJ Membership discount offer ends Aug. 19; renew or tell a friend to join!
-EIJ19 in San Antonio Sept. 5-7: 2 DC Pro Chapter members up for election
-Programs in September: film critic Ann Hornaday; guided Newseum tour
-Chapter trip to ballpark Saturday, June 22, raises funds for j scholarships
-SPJ Resolution passed at EIJ17 entered into record of July 17 Hill hearing
-Supreme Court decision has impact on FOIA interpretation
-Whistleblowers, journalists mingle at chapter’s happy hour, talk intensely
-June 11 Dateline Awards and Hall of Fame dinner speeches, photos
-Georgetown U. SPJ, DC Pro Chapter host happy hours, invite each other
-Save the date: June 9, 2020, for next year’s Dateline Awards dinner
-Calendar of upcoming DC Pro, SPJ-related events
WHAT’S AHEAD . . .
TIME RUNNING OUT ON THESE!
* National SPJ membership surveys regarding ** future of organization ** due Aug. 15; take it online
* National SPJ membership renewal and joining discount offer ends Aug. 19. Join national SPJ and save $25 on one year — then apply that savings to your $25 annual DC Pro local membership
Save these dates:
Thursday, Sept. 19: 6:30-8 p.m. – Ann Hornaday, Washington Post film critic, featured at DC Pro social event, at The Fund for American Studies near Dupont Circle
Saturday, Sept. 21: 1 p.m. – Newseum tour (pay $21) with other journalism groups. Eventbrite RSVPs being taken only up to the week before the event. Due to group rate tickets, you will not be able walk up the day of the event at that rate! Reserve soon.
Keep reading for additional details and more chapter news . . . .
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SPJ Strategic Planning Task Force will use your input
Be sure to voice your opinions about the future of the organization and its mission!
In conjunction with the SPJ Strategic Planning Task Force’s work to create a strategic plan to guide the Society over the next two to three years, members’ input is being collected. If you haven’t yet taken the online 20-minute member survey, you can do so through Aug. 15. An email went to all members of SPJ on Aug. 1 (from Society of Professional Journalists) with a link to the survey.
The plan will be used to determine SPJ’s focus in the short term and help define its priorities for the longer term. One of the next actions is selection of an executive director for the Society, to be based at headquarters in Indianapolis.
DC Pro Immediate Past President Jonathan Make led an effort earlier this summer to make sure SPJ chapters around the country were aware that an online meeting of the national board’s Executive Committee on July 13 would have a 30-minute (later changed to be a minimum of 30 minutes) slot set aside to hear from members on what qualities and skills they would like the next SPJ executive director to possess. You can read about the notification effort and the results of the call here, and here, here and here, respectively.
Making sure chapters and members would have a chance to weigh in during the Executive Committee meeting was another step in the local chapters’ effort to increase transparency in SPJ matters handled by national officers and how information about their decisions and actions taken are communicated to the membership. Read about the formation of the group and letters sent by the group to the national SPJ board here.
Join or renew membership, apply savings to DC Pro dues
The national SPJ organization is running a summer special. The annual membership dues that normally are $75 per year for professionals are discounted to $50 through Aug. 19.
And SPJ DC Pro has done the math for you – with the $25 you save on national dues, you can join your local chapter or just renew — and get plugged in to the organization through the fellow members in the nation’s capital.
In addition to knowing you are adding your name to a host of others who are dedicated, ethical journalists who believe in seeking the truth and reporting it fairly and accurately, there are a few reasons now is the right time to be a member of SPJ. So join SPJ and SPJ DC Pro RIGHT NOW! *
1) you’ll set yourself up to qualify for as much as $30 off a ticket to the chapter’s prestigious Dateline Awards and Hall of Fame Dinner on June 9, 2020.
2) if you decide you want to go to SPJ’s annual convention this year, the Excellence in Journalism 2019 conference in San Antonio Sept. 5-7, you can still get more than $100 off the registration price by being a member and registering by Aug. 12.
3) you’ll DEFINITELY want to be an SPJ member (and a DC Pro member, too) in 2020, because Excellence in Journalism 2020 will be in Washington, D.C. Imagine mingling with journalists from around the country and international journalists as well, knowing you got the very best registration rate for being a member of the co-sponsoring organization.
More information is here.
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Excellence in Journalism convention in San Antonio; in D.C. in 2020
Can’t make it to EIJ19 in San Antonio? Plan now to attend EIJ20 next September in Washington, at the Washington Hilton. (One of the reasons to join or renew SPJ membership at the reduced rate – more savings for the upcoming convention!)
DC Pro Chapter board members are working on program ideas to pass along to the national committee working on panels and activities for 2020. Perhaps you’d like to be involved, too? Email the chapter at spjdcchapter@gmail.com.
But first, the San Antonio convention. Even if you can’t attend, if you are a member, you’ll receive a ballot by email during the Sept. 5-7 convention period, giving you the chance to vote for national officers.
- Region 2 Director Andy Schotz, a DC Pro Chapter member, is on the ballot running for
secretary/treasurer. He’ll obviously be giving up the regional director/coordinator position – but another DC Pro Chapter member is running for the position he is vacating. Schotz also recently left the Herald-Mail in Hagerstown, Maryland, to be an editor at Bethesda Beat in Bethesda, Maryland.
- Stephenie Overman, who is instrumental in the SPJ Freelance Community on the national level and chairs the chapter’s freelance group, seeks the Region 2 coordinator po
sition. Due to recent SPJ bylaws changes, the regional coordinators are no longer automatically members of the national board. But the coordinator is vital to chapter health and welfare in Region 2.
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Upcoming chapter programs
Sept. 19 program/social event features Washington Post film critic
We’ll have a few more details soon, plus an Eventbrite for reserving your spot, but check out the time and location for an event featuring Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday. And save the date in your calendar!
Sept. 21 guided tour of Newseum, then meet-up at Elephant & Castle
Join like-minded peers – fellow journalists, in other words – for a tour of the iconic Pennsylvania Avenue landmark Newseum, which will be moving out by the end of the year and yielding the real estate to Johns Hopkins University. See it one last time! Check out the Eventbrite here. You need to reserve to get the group rate, and do so before one week before the event.
Organizers are the Society of Professional Journalists DC Pro and Maryland Pro chapters; the Maryland, Delaware, D.C. Press Association; the Baltimore Association of Black Journalists; and Reporters Without Borders. Membership in one of these groups for attendees is preferred, but not required.
For more information and to reserve a $21 ticket, go to this Eventbrite page.
And you can join us afterward at Elephant & Castle on Pennsylvania Avenue. Questions? Contact Jonathan Make at press@warren-news.com.
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Chapter’s annual baseball outing to Nats Park raises funds for SDX Foundation scholarships
The chapter’s annual trip to Nationals Park on June 22 raised $215 for the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation of Washington (SDX-DC) scholarship fund, to be awarded to selected students studying at local colleges and universities who intend to be journalists upon graduation. Those who bought a ticket did so knowing their price paid would go directly to the fund.
A raffle of tickets to that baseball game, plus another game in September, donated by two SDX-DC board members, raised an additional $91 during the chapter’s June 11 Hall of Fame and Dateline Awards dinner at the National Press Club. There were 4 tickets for the June 22 game and a separate pair for the Bryce Harper, er, Phillies game Sept. 23 at Nats Park. Congratulations to Lynn Blitzer, wife of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, for being the winner of all those tickets – she held up a lengthy string of raffle ticket receipts, indicating she’d bought plenty of chances to win. She also could be heard exclaiming she never wins anything!
It was a night of 22! Those who attended the game June 22 saw 22 runs scored, unfortunately only 9 of those for the home team. The visitors were the Atlanta Braves.
A one-third portion of each DC Pro Chapter member’s annual dues of $25 goes to the SDX-DC scholarship fund. The chapter also pays from its treasury all operating costs of the foundation, including postal fees and accounting and services and income tax. Through the generosity of chapter members, 100% of donations go to the scholarship fund.
You can make an additional tax-deductible contribution (SDX-DC is a 501(c)3 private foundation) by sending a check to: SDX-DC, PO Box 19555, Washington, DC 20036-0555
— from Bill McCloskey, who donated the June 22 tickets
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SPJ Resolution passed at EIJ17 enters Hill hearing record
Due to the efforts of DC Pro Chapter Recording Secretary Kathryn Foxhall, a noted Freedo
m of Information advocate who has followed her passion with efforts to stop government “Censorship by PIO,” a resolution passed by delegates to the annual SPJ national convention in 2017, now known as Excellence in Journalism, or EIJ17, was entered into the record of a July 17 joint House subcommittee hearing on scientific integrity. “I hope this opens up potential for further discussion with Congress,” she told the DC Pro board of directors.
Read more about the hearing on “Scientific Integrity in Federal Agencies” and the effort by Foxhall to get access for all journalists, not just science reporters, to be at the forefront of congressional transparency and access efforts here.
Supreme Court decision affects FOIA interpretation
In March, DC Pro Chapter Recording Secretary Kathryn Foxhall, a noted freedom of information advocate, wrote for the Dateline Online newsletter that an upcoming Supreme Court case (with which she has a research connection) “could have the most important consequences for interpretation of the Freedom of Information Act in some time. In particular, it has implications for the ‘trade secrets’ issue that is increasingly worrisome for SPJ and other open government groups. It’s a focus of the SPJ Freedom of Information Committee.”
Read DC Pro Chapter board member Ken Jost’s description of what took place to get to the high court handing down its 6-3 decision in Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, decided June 24, here. Jost specializes in Supreme Court coverage.
Whistleblowers, journalists mingle, discuss how to work together
At the full-capacity Journalist/Whistleblower Mixer sponsored by SPJ DC Pro Chapter and national SPJ on July 31 at the National Press Club, both types of professionals came to the realization that the coming forward of a whistleblower has far more legal consequences than many journalists have anticipated. It was also true that a number of whistleblowers don’t fully understand the role of journalists.
SPJ has established a working relationship with the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit organization that uses political advocacy and legal campaigns to protect whistleblowers and encourage “occupational free speech.” This partnership is called The Whistleblower Project.
Read about the happy hour event and related Whistleblower Summit activities on our website here.
The event was well-promoted, and interest was high. The turnout was fantastic.
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June 11 Dateline Awards and Hall of Fame dinner celebrates journalism
Check out our coverage of the evening in the links below, and plan to enter the Dateline Awards contest in 2020
The SPJ DC Pro Chapter’s annual Dateline Awards and Hall of Fame dinner was expertly helmed once again by 45-year chapter member Jim Bohannon, master of ceremonies.
CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, Washington Post personal finance columnist Michelle Singletary and longtime CBS News White House Correspondent Peter Maer were inducted as members of the 2019 class into the Hall of Fame of the D.C. Pro Chapter, Society of Professional Journalists.
The D.C. chapter’s 2019 Distinguished Service Award was presented to Amy Fickling, who’s been an editor and reporter in the Washington, DC, region for more than 25 years and has served SPJ for just as long.
The chapter presented its annual Dateline Awards for excellence in local journalism.
For more about the evening, check the following links to pages on the chapter website:
Dinner as a whole, including chapter president’s remarks: here
Hall of Fame speeches and introductions: here
Distinguished Service Award speech and introduction: here
List of Dateline Awards finalists and winners: here
Hall of Fame/DSA nominations contact: Steve Taylor at juxta747@gmail.com or (571) 355-2536.
SAVE THE DATE! Next year’s dinner, back at the National Press Club, will be on June 9, 2020.
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SPJ DC Pro / Georgetown University SPJ happy hours bring students and pros together
Georgetown University journalism students invited SPJ DC Pro Chapter members to a happy hour mixer at Gaslight Tavern in the U Street area of Northwest D.C. on July 24.
It was a kick-off event for the new academic year for the GU folks, and followed a happy hour the DC Pro Chapter invited GU journalism students to on May 7.
Seems the informal settings are popular, and the DC Pro Chapter board has discussed doing more similar events. The GU SPJ group has had several mixers at some of the trendy watering holes in the U Street corridor.
See photos and more coverage here.
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For freelance folks . . . .
The Freelance Group (SPJ members and non-members, but we hope you’ll join the chapter, too!) next meets at noon Thursday, Aug. 29, at the National Press Club. You buy your lunch, but you can’t purchase the exchange of ideas. You have to BE THERE. Let Stephenie Overman know if you plan to attend.
New SPJ DC Pro Chapter board member Celia Wexler wants you to know:
whowhatwhy.org, an online news site, is looking for freelance journalists interested in writing enterprise stories on a variety of topics, including climate change, gun control, and election integrity, federal agencies, national security, and the courts. Site pays competitive rates.
If you’re interested, contact Jackie: jackie.hajdenberg@whowhatwhy.org
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Not a journalist but would like to support SPJ’s missions?
Are you reading this newsletter, and thinking you’d like to support the missions and vision of SPJ, but you’re not a journalist and may not qualify for membership? Send an email to Linda Hall at national SPJ headquarters (lindah@hq.spj.org) to find out about becoming an Associate. You won’t be a full member, but you can still add your voice.
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CALENDAR for UPCOMING DC SPJ CHAPTER EVENTS
Aug. 26 6:45 p.m., SPJ DC Pro Chapter board meeting, Warren Communications News. Contact Jonathan Make at press@warren-news.com or email spjdcchapter@gmail.com.
Aug. 29 noon, SPJ Freelance Group lunch meeting, National Press Club. Contact organizer Stephenie Overman at saoverman@gmail.com if you plan to attend.
Sept. 19 6:30 to 8 p.m., Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday featured at DC Pro Chapter social event, The Fund for American Studies, 1706 New Hampshire Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20009 (Dupont Circle area) Watch for Eventbrite to RSVP. There may be a small fee.
Sept. 21 1 p.m., guided tour with other journalism groups of Newseum before it closes at the end of 2019. (Eventbrite here. There is a $21 charge for adult tickets, but it’s a group rate price, so savings involved.)
Nov. 14 noon, SDX Foundation of Washington, D.C., lunch meeting, National Press Club, McClendon Room.
2020
June 9 6 p.m. cocktails, 7 p.m. dinner, Dateline Awards and Hall of Fame Dinner, National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW, Washington, D.C.
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OTHER SPJ EVENTS OF INTEREST TO DC SPJ CHAPTER MEMBERS
Sept. 5-7 EIJ19, San Antonio, Texas
Sept. 10-12, 2020 EIJ20, Washington, D.C.
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SPJ-DC Leadership
President: Randy Showstack
Vice President & Program Chair: Dee Ann Divis
Treasurer: Amy Fickling
Corresponding Secretary: Amy Fickling
Recording Secretary: Kathryn Foxhall
Immediate Past President: Jonathan Make
Directors
Julie Asher
Denise Dunbar
Kenneth Jost
Selma Khenissi
Dan Kubiske
Celia Wexler
Ex-Officio
Sue Kopen Katcef – SPJ Vice President for Campus Chapter Affairs
Andrew Schotz – SPJ Region 2 Director
Other Officials of Note
Amy Fickling – Dateline Online (newsletter) editor
Stephenie Overman – Freelance group chair; Nominations Committee chair
Steve Taylor – HOF Nominations Committee chair
Kathy Burns – Student Liaison Committee chair
This information can also be found here: https://spjdc.org///board-of-directors/
Deadline for submitting copy for next newsletter: August 19
Email copy with Newsletter Copy in subject line to: spjdcchapter@gmail.com
Newsletter editor is Amy Fickling, treasurer/corresponding secretary 2019-2020
Copyright © 2019 Society of Professional Journalists, DC Pro Chapter, All rights reserved.