Dateline newsletter of February 2019

Vol. 4, No. 1 February 2019

Inside this issue:

-Activities coming up this week, and save some later dates
-Dateline Awards contest entry deadline is Feb. 28
-Call for volunteers to judge journalism contest in Dateline Awards judging exchange
-Give Steve Taylor your suggestions for Hall of Fame, DSA nominations
-Thinking about running for chapter office? Contact us
-Region 2 conference in Ocean City, April 5-7
-What chapter, members have been doing on journalism issues
-Journalism Job Fair coming April 6
-Freedom of Information activities
-Sunshine Week is March 10-16
-Membership appreciation meeting well attended
-A month for presidents
-Save the date: Tuesday, June 11, is Dateline Awards dinner night
-Member news
-Calendar of upcoming DC Pro, journalism-related events

Coming up this week:

Monday, Feb. 11:  A program at the National Press Club, “Using Sanctions to Protect Journalists,” 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m., a look at the use of Magnitsky Act sanctions. Non-members and the public can attend for $5; registration required.

Tuesday, Feb. 12:  SPJ/NPC freelance group lunch meeting, noon, National Press Club

Wednesday, Feb. 13: Free program at Cato Institute on “FOIA and You: Tips, Tricks, and War Stories,” 1 to 3 p.m. Register for it here.

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Save the dates:

March 10-16: Sunshine Week and Freedom of Information Day (March 16) projects

April 5-7: Region 2 Conference in Ocean City, Maryland

June 11: DC Pro’s annual Dateline Awards and Hall of Fame dinner, NPC

Keep reading for additional information about all of these activities.

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Feb. 28 is Dateline Awards Contest entry deadline

You still have time to prepare your best work from 2018 for competition!

Entries are being accepted for the annual Dateline Awards contest sponsored by the DC Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. The contest recognizes outstanding local journalism in the Washington, D.C., region across print, broadcast and online media in categories including breaking news, commentary and photojournalism.

The entry deadline is Feb. 28, 2019. Work must have been published or broadcast in 2018 to be considered. Entries are $32 each, including a payment processing fee.  You do not need to be an SPJ member to enter.

Learn more about the contest at www.spjdc.org. Or check out more details here.

Awards will be presented during the Dateline Awards and Hall of Fame dinner on June 11, 2019, at the National Press Club in downtown Washington. Finalists will be notified before the event, and a finalist rate will be offered on tickets to attend the dinner.

Entries must be submitted on Better Newspaper Contest website under the “2019 Dateline Awards” contest. Be sure to click on “Open Call Login.”

Have questions? Contact contest coordinator Jane Giles at datelinecoordinator@gmail.com.

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Would you like to be a journalism contest judge?

DC Pro Chapter members and friends of the chapter who like to volunteer to judge journalism contests, here’s an opportunity!

Your expertise is needed as our chapter is exchanging duties with the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania’s Golden Quill Awards in March. This chapter will in turn be judging our Dateline Awards entries. Their contest ends Feb. 24. Judges will receive the entries and instructions within one week and results will be due March 29. All judging will be done online through the BNC contest platform. You can take on as few or as many categories as you like.

Click this link for more information about the categories in the Golden Quill contest. If you’d like to volunteer to be a judge, at the same time indicate your category preference(s). For more information and to enlist as a judge, contact Jane Giles, SPJ DC Pro Dateline Awards Contest Coordinator, at datelinecoordinator@gmail.com.

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Appreciation: Thank you to all who already are judging various SPJ-connected contests, including the national Mark of Excellence competition for college journalism, that are underway. Recognition for excellence in journalism is a balm for all the hard-working reporters and editors out there who daily toil long hours and endure a lot of anti-media animosity.

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Seeking nominees for 2019 Hall of Fame, DSA

The DC Pro chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is seeking nominees for its 2019 Hall of Fame class and its Distinguished Service Award.

The criterion for membership in the Hall of Fame is simply this: strong journalism over at least 25 years in Washington.  The Distinguished Service Award goes to an individual who has distinguished himself or herself by contributing to the development of local journalism, mentoring other journalists and/or by working in the community.

Nominations are due by Feb. 25, 2019, and can be emailed to Steve Taylor, Awards Committee chairman, at juxta747@gmail.com. For additional information, click here.

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Thinking about a run for office for 2019-2020 chapter year?

Are you interested in being considered as a candidate to run for the DC Pro chapter board for the 2019-2020 chapter year? Officer positions are president, vice president, recording secretary, corresponding secretary and treasurer. Of the six at-large board seats, three are up for election each year, unless a seat has been vacated before the term ends, in which case that seat would be up for election for the year remaining in the term. Currently, there will be three two-year terms and one one-year term on the next ballot. Send an email expressing interest by Feb. 24 to spjdcchapter@gmail.com, and it will be forwarded to Stephenie Overman, chair of the Nominating Committee.

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CUNOC? Region 2 Conference in Ocean City

Early-bird registration prices end March 15

Region 2 Coordinator Andy Schotz says the regional conference April 5-7 this year will feature “something different” – both a journalism conference and a college First Amendment debate tournament. The events overlap when everyone involved gathers for the debate final.

So far, Facebook training for journalists is on the conference agenda. Other details are in the works and will be updated here as they are confirmed. See Eventbrite for more information and to register.

The conference will be at the Holiday Inn Ocean City (beachfront). Rooms are reserved at the conference rate of $129. Click here to reserve a room.

The registration fee includes a reception on Friday night and a continental breakfast, lunch and a Mark of Excellence heavy d’oeuvres reception on Saturday afternoon.

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What we’ve been doing . . .

DC Pro Chapter Recording Secretary Kathryn Foxhall, who serves on the chapter and national SPJ Freedom of Information committees, and in a similar capacity as a National Press Club member, was in a gathering of about 40 on Feb. 7 in Lafayette Park, in front of the White House, to bring attention to the Feb. 8 deadline for the Trump administration’s report to Congress on its findings about the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Turkey. The event was organized by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Video from the event is available here.

On Friday, the White House declined to meet the deadline, with some media outlets reporting that it disputed whether there actually was a deadline for a report to Congress.

National SPJ President Alex Tarquinio sent a letter to the White House in October, the month Khashoggi went missing, expressing concern over his disappearance, especially at a time when the president’s rhetoric attacking press freedoms had been escalating. The letter asked that President Donald Trump insist on a full, independent investigation of the alleged “extrajudicial killing.”

A program at the National Press Club Monday, Feb. 11, “Using Sanctions to Protect Journalists,” 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m., will take a look at the use of Magnitsky Act sanctions, including: What are the next steps following the end of the U.S. government’s mandatory four-month investigation into the Jamal Khashoggi murder; and lessons learned for other countries considering their own Magnitsky-style laws. Non-members and the public can attend for $5; registration required.

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DC Pro Chapter President Jonathan Make joined representatives of several regional journalism groups at a gathering at the National Press Club on Jan. 14 to discuss how the organizations can work together. During this inaugural discussion, areas for potential joint efforts and coordination emerged, including federal and state journalism shield laws; educating the public about what reporters do; the First Amendment and media, and access to government; and the state of the media business and of local journalism.

The groups’ plan is to make this a continuing dialog. For more information, click here.

Speaking of local journalism, did you see this Twitter essay by Lehigh University journalism professor Jeremy Littau? Or read the column published in the Washington Post by Steve Cavendish, a former editor of the Nashville Scene and Washington City Paper, saying “Local newspapers have already been gutted. There’s nothing left to cut.”?

But there are jobs out there. Find out about some of them at the annual Journalism Job Fair in April.

DC Pro is again a co-sponsor and organizer of the annual:

D.C. Journalism Job Fair
Saturday, April 6, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Georgetown University Continuing Education campus
640 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Near Chinatown/Gallery Place Metro station

Early-bird registration through March 1 is $10. For questions, email dcjournojobfair@gmail.com.

For employers who want to recruit at the job fair, registration information is here.

Early look at some of the 2019 recruiters here.

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Membership Appreciation meeting well attended

A number of DC Pro Chapter members who reached 5- or 10-year milestones in their SPJ memberships during 2018 were honored at the Jan. 26 Membership Appreciation meeting in Bethesda. It was a sweet (literally!) time as we shared desserts and other goodies and reminisced with them about long-time involvements with SPJ, with many tracing their initial days to a college chapter. See photos and read about some of the memories here.

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Freedom of Information

• A free event at the Cato Institute on “FOIA and You: Tips, Tricks, and War Stories,” is set for Wednesday, Feb. 13, 1 to 3 p.m. Among panelists are J. William Leonard, former director, Information Security Oversight Office​ at the National Archives, and Nate Jones, director of the Freedom of Information Act Project, at the National Security Archive​, a nonprofit research institution located at George Washington University. Register for it here.
• DC Pro Recording Secretary Kathryn Foxhall has been updating a blog with new information on the “Censorship by PIO” issue.

She says The Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida, headed by Frank LoMonte, issued in January a report on “Employees’ Right to Speak to the Media: Challenging Workplace Gag Policies.”

The report says, “Gagging employees from saying anything about their work to the news media is unnecessary, legally questionable, and contrary to the public’s interest in safe and honest workplaces.”

It continues: “Because the standards for initiating an NLRA [National Labor Relations Act] case are quite informal, advocates for journalists’ rights should consider filing challenges to overbroad speech policies. Since the law against gagging employees is not widely publicized or understood, challenging overly restrictive policies can help send the message to all employers that their authority over their employees’ speech is limited.”

Contact Kathryn Foxhall at kfoxhall@verizon.net if your news outlet might be interested in developing a challenge that could serve as a model for others to use.

• A Maryland state senator introduced a bill to name June 28 “Freedom of the Press Day” in the state, in memory of the slain employees of the Annapolis Capital Gazette newspaper and in honor of the work done daily by all journalists in Maryland.

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Sunshine Week March 10-16

DC Pro will be co-sponsoring a program during Sunshine Week exploring trade secrets that limit access to public information, headed up by national SPJ Freedom of Information Committee chair Danielle McLean with the assistance of DC Pro member Kathryn Foxhall and others. Among themes in development for the session: How government officials benefit from protecting trade secrets? (coziness with a particular industry?) Who else benefits from hiding information via trade secrets? How have businesses or corporations gone about getting information hidden via trade secrets? What laws are cited? How do they get that language included in contract? How do government agencies get that information shielded from the public?

Date for the program that week has not been determined.

Interested in helping out? Contact Kathryn Foxhall at kfoxhall@verizon.net.

On another front, Region 2 Coordinator Andy Schotz, who is an editor at the Herald Mail in Hagerstown, Maryland, is participating in the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association’s project to be published during Sunshine Week on the costs of local jurisdictions’ police records and their policies for obtaining them, and how that meshes with Freedom of Information laws.

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A month for presidents

February has a Presidents Day observance (Feb. 18) and Washington’s Birthday remembered (Feb. 22), and this year it has a Past Presidents Summit (Feb. 24), a gathering of past DC Pro Chapter presidents to discuss programs and ideas from their terms to compare for establishing a blueprint for the chapter’s future. The summit suggestion was contained in the financial audit committee’s report in 2018, a recommendation to put the chapter on a path toward ensuring its longevity in a changing media landscape. As initiatives emerge from the meeting, the chapter will learn of ways members and friends can be involved. A series of similar meetings, drawing in a wider audience, over the coming months is a possibility, as a way to keep the conversation flowing.

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Member news

Congratulations to DC Pro Chapter member and 45-year SPJ member Jim Bohannon, host of “The Jim Bohannon Show” on Westwood One, whose partnership with the show received a multi-year extension in December. The company announced that in addition to “his weekday broadcast, Bohannon will continue his signature daily feature, ‘The Offbeat,’ a humorous look at something just a bit off the beaten track, and anchor events for Westwood One News.”

“I’m honored to be continuing the apex of my career, working with the wonderful professionals at Westwood One,” Bohannon said. “As ‘The Jim Bohannon Show’ approaches the 26-year mark [in January 2019], I promise that we’ll continue to offer the best in news, analysis, and sometimes, just pure fun every weeknight.”

The winner of many industry awards, and a special distinction in his SPJ involvements, Bohannon is also a long-time master of ceremonies for the DC Pro Chapter’s annual Dateline Awards and Hall of Fame (of which he is a member) dinner.

We’ll see you June 11, sir!

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Mark June 11 on your calendar for Dateline Awards dinner

The chapter’s annual Hall of Fame and Dateline Awards dinner is set for June 11 at 7 p.m., preceded at 6 p.m. by a cash-bar reception. In addition to recognizing the finalists and winners in the annual Dateline Awards contest, we’ll induct a new class of honorees into the chapter’s journalism Hall of Fame, and hear from them about their distinguished careers and thoughts on the profession. Watch your email for more information as the date gets closer, and your mailbox, as the formal invitations will be mailed in April.

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2019 CALENDAR for UPCOMING DC SPJ CHAPTER EVENTS, OTHERS