Minutes of the SPJ D.C. Pro Chapter Board Meeting
Thursday, October 15, 2020
Virtual meeting held via videoconference and conference call
Present: President Randy Showstack; Treasurer Dan Kubiske; Recording Secretary Kathryn Foxhall; Corresponding Secretary Amy Fickling; board members Julie Asher, Denise Dunbar, Jacqueline Fuller, Ken Jost and Celia Wexler.
Excused absence: Board member Selma Khenissi; Vice President Dee Ann Divis.
Special Guests: Stephenie Overman, SPJ Region 2 coordinator; Kathleen Burns, student chapter liaison; and Andrew Schotz, chapter member.
Call to Order
President Randy Showstack called the meeting to order at about 6:47 p.m.
Minutes
On a motion to approve by board member Celia Wexler, seconded by Treasurer Dan Kubiske, the board approved the minutes of the Sept. 17 board meeting as emailed to the board members in advance of tonight’s meeting by Recording Secretary Kathryn Foxhall.
Financial Report
On a motion to accept by board member Julie Asher, seconded by Kubiske, the board accepted the financial report as emailed in advance of tonight’s meeting by Corresponding Secretary and immediate past Treasurer Amy Fickling.
She also said the audit committee planned to interview her and have a written report shortly after November 1.
She said she will be contacting Dateline Awards contest coordinator Jane Giles with a new version of the employment contract with the increased stipend for her work on the 2021 contest. Giles and Showstack will be signing the contract electronically.
Student Chapters
Kathleen Burns, student chapter liaison, said Kubiske has recommended students at George Washington University who want to reactivate the chapter there.
She said there have been issues with getting in touch with people, with the school closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stephenie Overman, SPJ Region 2 coordinator, said the sponsor of a university chapter does not have to be a faculty member, so an SPJ professionals could be a sponsor.
She said also student chapters may want to be part of a local professional chapter.
Kubiske said in some cases the university itself requires the sponsor to be a faculty member. Overman said that also depends on the support the chapter would get from a campus, and she is not anticipating funding from GW.
Andrew Schotz, chapter member, said the national SPJ requirements for a starting a new chapter include having 10 students who want to belong, including officers and directors, and a professional SPJ member as sponsor. He said many student chapters have no financial arrangement with the school.
SPJ is very interested in adding and retaining student members, he said. But it also wants to be sure there is enough support among students in a new chapter to keep the chapter going, once the effort has been made to start one up.
He said student members can become members of the D.C. chapter by joining national SPJ and paying student membership rates to SPJ. There is a potential that if a small number of students on a campus want a chapter but don’t qualify, they can become a satellite chapter to another established chapter.
He also said it’s possible to have a chapter with students from multiple universities or a hybrid chapter with some members from the Online News Association, for example, and some from SPJ.
Board member Jacqueline Fuller said she is looking into a possible chapter at Marymount University, of which she is an alumnus.
Burns also said she hopes to get contacts to arrange internships for students, including remote internships.
Board member Denise Dunbar said she has gotten more and better interns during the COVID-19 pandemic because students’ plans changed. Her staff meets with them at least once in person.
Board member Celia Wexler suggested an interesting internship might be working with Foxhall on freedom of information issues. Members also discussed getting an intern to help with chapter business.
Region 2 Report
Overman said we need to get to word out on the virtual program we are doing on Freedom of Information requests in Virginia jointly with the Virginia Pro Chapter on November 10. Dunbar will be moderating the session.
FOI Report
Foxhall said she wanted to present the idea that we never have a meeting on FOI without talking about PIO barrier issues, in part because the two things are so interrelated. For example, you can’t know what is happening inside an agency’s FOI’s office if the people are forbidden to talk to a reporter.
She said she has been working on finding a plaintiff in the Third Circuit to sue with the help of the Media Freedom of Information Clinic at Yale University. She has emailed about 130 publications, had about 12 email discussions and about four phone discussions.
She said has the strong feeling from the discussions that we are right and it is horrible that we are right.
Foxhall also said she will draft a letter to Congress and to the Council on Foreign Relations because they have a task force on bringing back trust to CDC.
Dunbar said she would also like to see a separate program on the PIO barriers. Foxhall said now Frank LoMonte has presented a pathway for legal action, we need to let people know.
Showstack asked if there were connections among the PIO barriers, FOI and misinformation. Foxhall said that at least it’s important to recognize that when people in our own government control the information flow what we get from them is disinformation also.
Fickling said that right after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, GWU lecturer Amitai Etzioni was on a National Press Club panel and said then that the next battlefield will be a battle space — information in the realm of cyberspace, rather than boots on the ground. Noting that here we are nearly 20 years later, and that prediction is playing out in our disinformation battles in politics, never mind the military, She said we could look smart and have a forward-looking, as well as a retrospective of how we got here, panel discussion on that. We could focus on how the media can work to counteract and correct the “war of words,” so to speak. Wexler said she will try to contact Etzioni to see if he’s interested in participating.
Adding to the same idea and for a possible panelist, Kubiske noted Lynn Walsh, former chair of the SPJ Ethics Committee, has an online program on media literacy. Overman said the head of the communications school at the University of Virginia has focused on Facebook and Twitter as information purveyors and might provide good insight or possibly could be on such a panel.
Membership
Fickling said she was thinking it would be better to postpone any membership drive until after the end of the year. By that time there may be progress on the membership database with national SPJ moving to a new platform. Kubiske said the new database could be available in late October or November.
She said the national office is responsive in answering questions about chapter membership, but it would be helpful if national were more proactive in pushing membership information to us.
Showstack urged her to continue to ask for things such as a monthly report, and about when the database will be ready.
Board members discussed a system of emailing chapter members whose membership is expiring. Burns suggested that the board might consider recruiting a member who is not on the board for the task.
Events
Kubiske reported that the SPJ International Community will be having a session on identifying and reporting about human trafficking.
Foxhall asked Kubiske if he could discuss with people he knows internationally about controls similar to the PIO barriers.
He said going back 40 years he knows how the PIOs control things in Europe. He said he would talk to his IC co-chair and people overseas.
Annual Membership Appreciation Meeting
Fickling said she will look at the old national SPJ membership database to see how many members are coming up for five-year anniversary dates.
Board members discussed postponing the annual membership appreciation meeting until March rather than hold it in January, when it has been held for the past several years, due to current instability about gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic and the possibility of being able to hold it outdoors in March.
Members also discussed ideas for conducting it as a Zoom meeting, including video acceptances of longevity recognitions.
Hall of Fame Bios
Board member Ken Jost discussed the current project of writing biographies for Hall of Fame members to be posted on the chapter website. More recent inductees are easier to find info on, and some of the much earlier inductees are requiring research. He said it only takes 35-45 minutes to do one bio. If all board members did one or two, he said, we will be closer to having a critical mass for the website.
Kubiske said he would put something together for people to sign up on.
Chapter Website
Showstack invited board members to look at the chapter website and report on what they liked or what they would like to see changed or ideas on what we can add to the site. The board will discuss it at the next meeting.
Government Accountability Project
Wexler discussed the invitation the chapter had from the Government Accountability Project to work with them on issues surrounding the upcoming election.
Wexler and Foxhall had thought that it was not a good fit for the chapter given that journalists will be covering the election.
She said after the election there may be a possibility to participate.
Adjournment
On a motion by Kubiske, seconded by board member Julie Asher, the board voted to adjourn the meeting.
The meeting was adjourned at about 8:20 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Kathryn Foxhall
Recording Secretary
2020-2021