Minutes of the SPJ D.C. Pro Chapter Board Meeting
Thursday, January 21, 2021
Virtual meeting held via videoconference and conference call.
Present: President Randy Showstack; Treasurer Dan Kubiske; Vice President Dee Ann Divis; Recording Secretary Kathryn Foxhall; Corresponding Secretary Amy Fickling; board members Julie Asher, Denise Dunbar, Jacqueline Fuller, Ken Jost, Selma Khenissi and Celia Wexler.
Excused absences: Board member Denise Dunbar.
Special Guests: Stephenie Overman, SPJ Region 2 coordinator; Kathleen Burns, student chapter liaison; Rebecca Synder, executive director of the MDDC Press Association; Robert Becker of the D.C. Open Government Coalition; and Steve Taylor, chair of the Hall of Fame Committee
Call to Order
President Randy Showstack called the meeting to order at about 6:47 p.m.
Minutes
Treasurer Dan Kubiske moved the minutes of the November meeting, as previously emailed by Recording Secretary Kathryn Foxhall, be approved with one change he had suggested by email. Board member Selma Khenissi seconded the motion.
During discussion, Corresponding Secretary Amy Fickling suggested we use the chat feature to record motions and who made them. Kubiske noted the motions in the minutes did have information on who made them. Foxhall noted due to lack of audio recording for the first few minutes, she had not gotten the names of those who made the first two motions. Fickling had supplied those in the editing process.
After discussion the board also decided that reports in the minutes on votes would list whether there were votes in the negative but not the names of those persons, except in cases where a recorded vote is requested.
The board voted to approve the motion, with no objections.
Special Guest Rebecca Snyder
Showstack at 7 p.m. welcomed to the meeting special guest Rebecca Snyder, executive director of the Maryland-Delaware-District of Columbia Press Association, Inc.
She described the press association mission as speaking for news media organizations of the three jurisdictions.
Members of SPJ are welcome to get the MDDDC weekly newsletter, she said.
Stephenie Overman, SPJ Region 2 coordinator asked what the MDDC would do for a conference this year in light of the pandemic.
Snyder said her association had stepped up its use of webinars, with subject matter for early and career journalists. For their awards, they did one-hour episodes leading up to their Capstone Awards the week of what would have been their conference. The association will probably do something similar this year, she said, with some added conference events.
Synder said MDDC has built out their Youtube channel and they do podcasts, called “Five Dubs” that pull out the stories behind the stories and highlight that journalism is the connective tissue of society. She said they might be able to feature something SPJ DC is doing or some of our events on podcast episodes.
Snyder reported MDDC is pushing a public information act reform bill in the Maryland Legislature. The state has a public information act Compliance Board which rules on fee disputes. The legislation would allow the board to act on and enforce other decisions. It is a step requestors might take rather than going to court, she said.
The hearing is February 11 and testimony is due two days prior.
She said SPJ DC could either sign the MDDC testimony or sign up to testify itself.
MDDC is a founding member of the Maryland Open Government Group, which SPJ DC could also work with on testimony.
On January 25, MDDC will be doing a roundtable on reporter access to the Maryland State House, with the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Daily Record and Maryland Matters. The feedback will be going to the Senate leadership.
SPJ members are also welcome to enter the MDDC contest on news coverage.
She noted that chapter member Andy Schotz is helping coordinate their Sunshine Week. It will look at how government entities are contending with the COVID pandemic.
In Maryland the governor had allowed public information requests to be filled 30 days after the emergency ends, she said.
Foxhall explained to Snyder that SPJ has made a priority of opposing the restrictions that force reporters to go through public information officers to speak to anyone. Rebecca said that her association would like to know about such activity to share it with their members.
She said the association usually goes to the cCapitol in Washington once a year, usually through the National Newspaper Association’s federal lobbying day and they work with the News Media Alliance.
The association has eight committees that meet by phone or virtually and they have board meetings four times a year, often in Annapolis.
They have 125 members organizations and that translates to 45 ownership groups.
Showstack thanked Snyder for MDDC’s great work and for a fruitful conversation. He said the chapter looks forward to working more closely with MDDC and the discussion with Snyder could easily have continued for much longer, if there was more time. Snyder said she would welcome coming back at a future time.
Treasurer’s Report
Kubiske reported there had been no big expenses. The report had been emailed to the board members earlier.
He moved acceptance of the report. Board member Julie Asher seconded the motion.
Fickling asked if there is a way we can make the Region 2 funds look like the chapter does not own the funds.
Region 2 director Stephenie Overman said we need to move the funds into a separate account as soon as possible.
In answer to Fickling’s question about the format, Kubiske said he would not list the funds that the chapter has listed as “reserve” in that manner in the new format, because the chapter can use them if we wish.
Fickling, who was chapter treasurer for a number of years, clarified that the chapter does have a reserves fund of $25,000 set aside for the chapter (equivalent to a year’s revenues) and $25,000 set aside for assisting the SDX Foundation of Washington’s scholarship fund if or when the need arises. This was designated by the board several years ago. This should be listed in the financial report as reserves, in addition to listing the Region 2 funds as residing in the reserves. She said she will talk to Kubiske about this more outside the meeting.
After more discussion on the meaning of the labels on the different parts of the fund, Showstack called for the vote.
The board voted to accept the report.
The understanding was that Kubiske could submit a revised report next month if necessary.
Report from D.C. Open Government Coalition
Robert Becker, a long-time member of SPJ, joined the meeting at 7:32 p.m.
He said that the D.C. Open Government Coalition will do a program for Sunshine Week, possibly on March 16 or 18.
The three new city councilmembers and the chair of the committee with jurisdiction over open meetings and government openness will be invited. The program will ask them to talk about government transparency in D.C. Another topic may be the D.C. government’s suspension of FOIA deadlines because of the COVID pandemic, until 45 days after the emergency. The council has now said that starting in February there will be deadlines, but now there are backlogs.
The coalition would like to present a discussion on how much of a backlog there is and how the government will overcome it, possible with people from the mayor’s office.
In addition, the program may also look at what Becker said is a terrible problem with police transparency. The Metropolitan Police Department is not transparent and the federal policing agencies are black holes, he said. There are probably a dozen to two dozen police agencies within the city that can enforce D.C. laws and bust people for things the MPD would, according to Becker. However, none of them report what they do or make it easy to find out, he said.
He asked the chapter to get the word out to our members about the session and help with any contacts with the federal policy agencies, including the Capitol Police, the Park Police, and the Federal Protective Service.
Becker said people will have an opportunity to testify at the confirmation hearing of the new police chief.
DCOGC will meet again on Feb 17.
Showstack thanked Becker for his outstanding work regarding Sunshine Week and his other efforts and said the chapter would look forward to learning more how it might assist with Sunshine Week.
Becker left the meeting at 7:42 p.m.
Hall of Fame Report
Chapter member Steve Taylor, who leads the chapter’s work in naming Hall of Fame recipients, said previous invited awardees are still available, in light of the pause the chapter put on the Hall of Fame dinner last year, due to the pandemic.
Fickling explained that the arrangement made with the National Press Club in 2020, was to renew the existing contract with no changes, with the deposit retained, to hold the dinner the second Tuesday of 2021.
The board began to consider alternatives in case the COVID-19 pandemic prevents holding an in-person event or the Club is not able to host the event this year.
One suggestion was that we do the virtual event for just the awards, not the Hall of Fame, as the chapter did last year.
Taylor noted the live event was both more fun and a revenue source.
Fickling said we might consider delaying the event until October, if there are indications things are returning to normal by then if not by the time we need to publicize a June dinner.
It was the consensus that the board revisit the issue at its next meeting.
Showstack noted Taylor is ready to hand the reins over of the Hall of Fame committee to someone else. Ken Jost has said he is willing to take some of the responsibility.
Showstack thanked Taylor for his great work over the years and also welcomed Jost’s involvement with the Hall of Fame Committee.
Dateline Awards
Fickling said the number of entries for the Dateline Awards contest is about the same as last year at this time.
The awards coordinator is using several mailing lists for publicity.
The BNC site and Paypal are working okay, she said, in the wake of some intense work on them around the holidays.
She said Jane Giles, who is the paid contest coordinator, has asked that board members tweet about the contest.
Showstack offered special thanks to Fickling, who does many things like keeping the awards running, behind the scenes for the chapter.
Region 2 Report
Stephenie Overman, Region 2 coordinator, noted that the “Super Regional” conference will be on April 9-10. It will be virtual and inexpensive for SPJ members.
There will be some sessions any attendee can attend and some will be solely for the individual regions.
PIO Constraints
Foxhall said it is a key moment for the PIO constraints issue. The national SPJ sent a very strong letter to the Biden administration and The Hill newspaper picked up on it. In addition, she got good feedback from the group Open the Government on the analysis she did on the need for a focus on the constraints on reporters. She said, however, the problem needs a lot of work and contacts with people who can help.
She said she had contacts with the Society of Environmental Journalists and she hopes we can build a coalition to continuously pressure the Biden administration.
She asked members to think of any contacts they have with prominent people who would listen to a pitch and possibly speak out on the issue. She could also use help re-contacting people we have sent letters.
Events, Membership Meeting
Showstack noted that the chapter would have a town hall meeting with SPJ president Matt Hall on January 26.
Fickling said she was thinking about holding the membership meeting virtually, and contacting chapter members who have five- or 10-year interval SPJ membership anniversaries, as usual, but ask if they would participate in an online format. The board had discussed attempting an in-person meeting outdoors in March, but that seems out of the question at this point.
She said we might move toward a YouTube type program. Kubiske said we could do it on Zoom and then post it on You Tube.
Showstack suggested that Fickling and Kubiske be a task force to figure out how it should be done.
Student Chapter Liaison
Kathleen Burns, student liaison, said that she would be speaking February 4 to students at Marymount College. She said there is work on a program with Marymount, George Washington University, and Maryland on the state of the student press. It would involve pending legislation in Virginia on the fact the First Amendment does not necessarily apply to student journalists.
The board recommended pushing the program to March.
Interns, Other
Vice President Dee Ann Divis said the list that we have on work for interns, compiled by Kubiske, is good, although we may need to add more things that would be worthy of a college student furthering their career. She said we might consider a high school internship program that would give students things to do that are interesting, but perhaps not on the college level.
Kubiske said we need to know what the universities require for internships in order to give students credit for them. Showstack asked Burns to follow up on that.
Divis noted the proposals for this year’s SPJ national conference will be due soon.
Kubiske noted the SPJ International Community will do a program February 2 on newspapers that have done deep dives into the racist problems with coverage in their 100 plus year histories.
Adjournment
Kubiske moved the board adjourn. Fickling seconded the motion. The board approved the motion without objection. The meeting was adjourned at 8:31 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Kathryn Foxhall
Recording Secretary
2020-2021