Balloting for the leadership of the SPJ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter will begin soon. Chapter members will receive an email with the candidate information, voting information and a link to vote.
This is your chance to decide who will be leading the chapter for the next year. Please take a couple of minutes to familiarize yourself with the candidates and then vote when the email arrives.
The chapter board of directors consists of the president, vice president, corresponding secretary, recording secretary and treasurer, along with six at-large directors serving two-year terms. Three directors are elected at the annual election, along with all board officers.
Following are the statements from the candidates for the 2022-2023 chapter year, which begins mid-June with the swearing in of new officers and directors.
President – Dee Ann Divis
Dee Ann Divis is an award-winning journalist reporting on satellite navigation, commercial space, NASA, robotics and emerging technology sectors like artificial intelligence and drones for outlets including UPI, Al Jazeera, Aviation Week, the Los Angeles Times, Aerospace Daily, Jane’s International Defense Review, GPS World and Inside GNSS. She has wide-ranging experience as an editor and manager with a specialty in entrepreneurial news operations. She relaunched and managed the global science and technology coverage for United Press International and was the founding editor of Inside Unmanned Systems magazine. She joined the Washington Examiner daily newspaper in Washington, D.C., weeks after its launch in 2005, rising to become assistant managing editor. She currently edits the newsletter of the Institute of Navigation and is working on a new publication of her own. Dee Ann spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow and was awarded the Robert D.G. Lewis Watchdog Award and several Dateline Awards for Washington Correspondent by the Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Her work has also been recognized by Military, Reporters and Editors and the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association.
Vice President – Denise Garner Dunbar
The SPJ DC Pro board has made great strides during the past three years under Randy Showstack’s thoughtful leadership. I would like to play a more impactful role in trying to help continue moving the board on its positive trajectory. I would like to help grow our membership, outreach and programs as vice president during the next year.
Bio: Denise is publisher and executive editor of the Alexandria Times, a weekly community newspaper in Alexandria, Virginia with a print run of 19,000 and another 8,000 digital subscribers. The Times is in a city of 160,000 residents just outside of Washington, D.C. and is aided by having a well-educated population with many people who care deeply about their community.
Bucking the generally negative trends in the newspaper industry, the Times has posted strong earnings the past few years and has successfully weathered the COVID-19 pandemic. The Times strives to provide a high-quality product, with an emphasis on investigative reporting and features about community members. We have won numerous awards from the Virginia Press Association for our writing, ad design and overall content.
Denise graduated from North Texas State University (now called the University of North Texas) in 1982 with a B.S. in journalism and a double minor in political science. After leaving North Texas, Denise went to work for the Charlotte Observer in Charlotte, North Carolina. She spent two years there, then went to the University of Georgia, where she received a M.A. in Political Science (international relations).
From there, she and her husband settled in Alexandria, and Denise spent six years working as an intelligence analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, where she was Boris Yeltsin’s biographer. She then spent five years working for the Commonwealth of Virginia on welfare reform development, implementation and operation. After staying at home for eight years until her three children began school, Denise joined the Alexandria Times in 2009 as editorial page editor.
Corresponding Secretary – Amy Fickling
I served in the role of corresponding secretary for several years while also being chapter treasurer, then was elected to the position twice before deciding to run again for another term this election. The corresponding secretary is in charge of chapter membership, but I have been developing a definition of this board officer role for the new digital world, so it has come to include putting together the chapter’s newsletter along with all other membership correspondence.
I’ve also served on the chapter’s (and for a time, on national SPJ’s) SDX Foundation for a number of years, currently serving interim president of the chapter’s SDX Foundation, its education arm that provides scholarships to undergraduate journalism students at area colleges. I was honored as the chapter’s Distinguished Service Award winner in 2019, which is also the last time we have been able to meet in person for the annual awards dinner, and am looking forward to congratulating the next awardee in person at the 2022 dinner.
I have been active in the SPJ DC Pro chapter since 1985 while working as a reporter and/or editor at a variety of media outlets in the metropolitan area, including as assistant news editor at the McClatchy-Tribune News Service (was there the service was closed in 2014). I’m currently a copy editor at Warren Communications News, working on International Trade Today and Export Compliance Daily and the new Trade Law Daily.
Having been chapter president (1991) and a two-term national SPJ board member – as Region 2 director (1993 to 1997) – after moving “up the ladder” from recording secretary and Dateline editor positions locally, I’ve seen participation in the chapter wax and wane, and witnessed the rise of many other niche journalism groups that may have drawn away some of our potential new members. But the broad-based efforts for all journalists that SPJ stands for still have an appeal, and I want to see the chapter continue to attract new minds and voices that carry these efforts forward into the future — especially on journalism ethics and seeking truth to report it. We work well with other journalism organizations, but would like to grow our membership – that is a task I will oversee, should I be elected.
As we anticipate a return to some semblance of what we last called normal, let us continue doing our jobs, continue getting out the news, and continue identifying with each other as journalists of talent, truth and energy. Together through SPJ DC we are all stronger.
Recording Secretary – Jackie Fuller
Jacqueline F. Fuller is the executive producer and host of Interfaith Connections, a 30 minute television show on the world’s belief systems based in Fairfax, Virginia. She is also a freelance writer for the Washington Informer covering religion news. In 2016, Jacqueline was acknowledged by the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington as an emerging leader for her work in religion communications. She is a member of the Washington DC Association of Black Journalists and serves on the Religion Communicators Council’s Board of Governors as the past President.
Jacqueline received her Bachelors of Arts degree in Communications from Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia.
Treasurer – Dan Kubiske
I am the current treasurer for the Washington, DC, chapter and am seeking re-election. Besides serving as the chapter treasurer I am also the co-chair of the national SPJ International Community.
I have worked as a freelance journalist in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Dominican Republic, Brazil and Honduras; and, of course, Washington DC area for 35 years. (Full disclosure: my wife was a US foreign service officer. I just tagged along as her assignments took us around the world.)
Members of the DC SPJ chapter provided some great leads for my overseas work back in the early 1990s shortly after I joined. When I returned from Asia in 1994, I wanted to give back to the organization. Since then, I have done what I could for the chapter, including serving as a member of the board of directors, vice-president, president and now candidate for treasurer.
I hope I helped move the chapter forward. And now, after 30+ years of membership in this organization, I like to think of myself as part of the living memory of the chapter and as one who encourages newer members to step up and take over the reins of power to move the chapter in new and exciting directions. For now, I continue to do what I can to help the chapter grow and remain an important part of the Washington journalism community.
I am also a member of the National Press Club in Washington and remain a (distant) member of the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club, where I served on the board of governors.
Board
Ken Jost
Kenneth Jost has covered legal affairs as a reporter, columnist and editor since 1970. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Georgetown University Law Center, where he has been an adjunct professor. He was managing editor and news director at WHRB-FM, Harvard Radio Broadcasting, as a Harvard undergraduate. He was a reporter with the Nashville Tennessean from 1970-1976, assigned to local and state courts for most of that time. After four years as chief legislative assistant to then Rep. Albert Gore, Jr. (1977-1980), he served for six years as editor of The Los Angeles Daily Journal. He has been affiliated with Congressional Quarterly as contributor or staff writer since 1987. He currently is author of Supreme Court Yearbook (annual series) and The Supreme Court from A to Z and was editor of The New York Times on the Supreme Court, 1857-2008, all published by CQ Press. As staff writer for CQ Researcher, he was a member of the CQ Researcher team that won the 2002 American Bar Association Silver Gavel award for magazines. He is currently in his tenth year of blogging under the eponym Jost on Justice; he provides bulletin-board coverage of major Supreme Court actions and other legal affairs news by tweeting under the handle: @jostonjustice.
Kathryn Foxhall
Because she needed a job, Kathryn Foxhall inadvertently became a reporter on a weekly newspaper in her hometown of Selma, Alabama. Her addiction was irreversible within two weeks.
She covered health in Washington for 40 years, including 14 years (1978-1992) as editor of the American Public Health Association’s newspaper.
After years of getting a dynamic education by speaking frankly with sources on Capitol Hill and in federal agencies, she became alarmed when, 25-30 years ago, federal workers gradually came under rules prohibiting them from communicating with journalists without the oversight of public relations offices—in reality, heavy censorship coming down from the people in power.
As SPJ surveys would later show, these restrictions have become entrenched through much of the U.S. culture with government staff, teachers, scientists, police officers and many other employees under coercion either to never speak to the press, or to never speak without notifying the authorities.
Kathryn approached SPJ about it and the society took up the issue even while many journalists acquiesced, saying nothing could be done. Among other things, that led to letters signed by dozens of groups to the Presidential Administrations and a meeting of an SPJ-led delegation with White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest.
For many years before COVID 19 hit, CDC blocked reporters and told us who we could talk to and allowed no contact that was not controlled.
“One question for journalists is whether this is corrupting us as much it is the leadership in government and the private sector. We are watching intense suppression of information, but we assume we are not publishing a very skewed picture. But gagged staff and closed doors will inevitably mean very bad situations and people being hurt,” Kathryn said.
Allison Hageman
Allison Hageman is a graduate of the University of Delaware and vice president of Georgetown’s Society of Professional Journalists student chapter. In 2021, she was selected as a student newsroom member for the Online News Association and Society of Professional Journalists national conferences. Hageman currently works as a communications coordinator at the National Cherry Blossom Festival and volunteers as a proofreader for Street Sense Media. She was previously an editorial intern at the Alexandria Times and District Fray Magazine. Her byline has appeared in Capitol Standard, DCist, Delaware Today, and Out & About Magazine.