When E. Bruce Harrison gave brief remarks at the DC Pro Chapter’s membership appreciation meeting in Bethesda, Maryland, in January 2018, the then-65-year SPJ member recommended that journalists not tweet in the middle of the night and also lamented that some online journalism isn’t always completely accurate.
He joined the organization when he was a journalism student at the University of Alabama. He graduated in 1954 with a “Sigma Delta Chi” ribbon on his diploma. SDX is what SPJ started as in 1909.
In corresponding with Corresponding Secretary/Treasurer Amy Fickling about the membership appreciation meeting in 2018, Harrison mentioned that he had been back to his alma mater “a few times to say hello to the young SPJ members. As you know, Amy, I served as advisor with the national [SPJ] board when Jim Plante was there [as national president]; helped launch the First Amendment effort with another DC “senior” member, the General Motors guy whose name will come to me after I send this to you [it was R.T. Kingman]. Oh, yes, provided a DC office in my PR firm’s office for a while, and you know I was treasurer of DC chapter several years ago.”
Other members recognized for various milestones along with Harrison that year were Hank Wieland (52 years), Kenneth Jost (45 years), Bill McCloskey and Dan Kubiske (30 years), Steve Taylor (15 years) and current chapter President Randy Showstack (20 years), who joined the chapter board as an at-large director during that same meeting. (They are pictured above.)
McCloskey wrote an obituary for the National Press Club newsletter, the Wire, including in it that Harrison, by the time of his death at 88 a 68-year member of SPJ, he was among those who created “Project Watchdog,” the media’s effort to engage the public in a dialogue about the role of free and ethical news media in a democracy that guarantees freedom of the press.
Harrison and others raised $1 million and worked with the Ad Council to prepare a four-year series of public service ads. The slogan of the first Project Watchdog ads: “If the press didn’t tell us, who would?”
See also the obituary online in the Washington Post here.