SPJ DC Election 2020

… time to decide …

Election Process, Officer Duties, Candidate Statements

Voting for officers and at-large board members of the Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is now open. Candidate statements are posted below.

Members in good standing will receive online ballots. Voting will close at 5 p.m., Monday, May 18.

If you want to verify that your dues are current, please email our Corresponding Secretary Amy Fickling at spjdcchapter@gmail.com.

If you have any questions about the election procedures, please email the Nominations Committee Chair Stephenie Overman at saoverman@gmail.com.


Description of Duties of Officers for the SPJ DC Pro Chapter

A — Article Six- Duties of Officers (from SPJ DC Bylaws)

Section 1: The president shall preside at all meetings, shall exercise general supervision over the affairs and activities of the Chapter, and shall serve as an ex-officio member of all committees.

Section 2: If the president is absent or incapacitated, the president’s duties shall be assumed by the vice president. The vice president shall also serve as program coordinator for the Chapter.

Section 3: The recording secretary shall keep minutes of all meetings of the Chapter and send records of the proceedings to members of the Executive Board.

Section 4: The corresponding secretary shall be the custodian of all Chapter records unless a special officer shall be appointed for that purpose, shall maintain the Chapter roster, including all records and reports on membership enrollment, and shall conduct all correspondence of the Chapter, as required.

Section 5: The treasurer shall receive all Chapter funds, keep them in one or more federally insured depositories approved by the Executive Board, and pay out funds only by direction of the Executive Board. The treasurer shall make a written monthly report to the Executive Board of all disbursements, receipts and balances.

— Article Seven- Executive Board (from SPJ DC Bylaws)

Section 1: The Executive Board of the Chapter shall consist of the officers of the Chapter, the immediate past president, and six directors chosen as provided in the Chapter Constitution and, when applicable under Section 3 of Article Five of the Constitution, the Region 2 Director and any elected national officer who is a Chapter member.

Section 2: The Executive Board of the Chapter shall be responsible for conducting the business of the Chapter.

C — Article Five-Directors (from the SPJ DC Constitution)

Section 1: There shall be elected from the membership of this Chapter six directors who shall meet at least nine times per year with the officers of the Chapter to formulate plans and procedures. These directors together with the officers of the chapter and the immediate past president shall constitute the Executive Board.

Section 2: Three directors shall be elected each year for a term commencing at the next annual installation of officers and expiring at the installation two years thereafter.

While the directors do not have specific duties allocated to them by the Bylaws and the Constitution of the chapter, they are expected to work fully with the board and to select an area or areas of interest on which they would like to focus their efforts. They can choose from existing committees or propose a new committee or opt to work on annual events such as the Hall of Fame Dinner.  The chapter also encourages directors to volunteer to serve as judges for national SPJ’s professional chapter and student media competitions and for the DC Chapter’s annual Dateline Awards contest. They can decide what is the best form of service to the chapter, based on their own interest and time commitments.

Section 3: If the Region 2 director or an elected national officer is a member of this Chapter, that person shall be a voting member of the Executive Board.

Recent changes since 2018 to the national SPJ Bylaws changed and decreased the national board structure. Regional directors, elected in each region, used to be automatic members of the national board. They are no longer members of the national board just by being elected in the regions, and, in fact, are now known as regional coordinators. Since they do not hold national office in the same sense as originally, it is still open to interpretation whether DC Pro’s Bylaws mean that the regional coordinator, if also a chapter member, is automatically considered an ex-officio of the chapter board.

D — Article Four-Officers (from SPJ DC Constitution)

Section 1: The officers of this Chapter shall be a president, a vice president, a recording secretary, a corresponding secretary and a treasurer.

Section 2: The officers shall be elected for one-year terms, which shall begin at the next annual installation of officers and shall end at the following installation.


Candidates in 2020 for the 2020-2021 chapter year

President: Randy Showstack

I am honored to run for reelection to continue to serve as president of the SPJ-DC Pro Chapter, a position that I have held since June 2019. This past year has been a very intensive time for the chapter as we have worked diligently to serve our members by presenting outstanding programming while also preparing for the 2020 SPJ Excellence in Journalism Conference that is scheduled to be held in Washington, D.C. in September. During this past year, the chapter also has continued to speak out for freedom of the press and has been working to evolve in the face of the COVID-19 crisis, among other efforts. I am pleased to have helped assist the chapter in these endeavors.

I look forward to continuing to serve as president, and to working with all of the chapter members, to help the chapter maintain and build on its strong leadership role in support of journalism and journalists in the Washington, D.C. area.  Our chapter has such a wealth of talented members and such a committed board, and I am both proud and humbled to serve you. For my day job, I have been the senior writer for Eos, an online source for news about the Earth and space sciences, which is published by the American Geophysical Union. At Eos, I have focused on reporting on policy, politics, and discovery in the areas of Earth and space science and environmental issues.

Vice President: Dee Ann Divis

Dee Ann Divis is the Washington editor for Inside Unmanned Systems magazine and writes for Inside GNSS magazine. She was the science and technology editor for United Press International anda Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. She has reported on all aspects of science and technology—and in particular on space, biodefense, technology policy, drones and the aerospace industry—for the Los Angeles Times, Aerospace Daily, Jane’s International Defense Review and Aviation Week’s website. She joined the award-winning Washington Examiner daily newspaper shortly after its launch, rising to become assistant managing editor. She’s won the SPJ DC Pro chapter’s Robert D.G. Lewis Watchdog Award and its Dateline award for Washington correspondent and the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association and Military, Reporters and Editors have recognized her reporting.

Corresponding Secretary: Amy Fickling

Over the past couple of years, I’ve served in the role of corresponding secretary, in addition to being treasurer. Contacting members with membership renewal promotions or to seek their involvement in chapter activities has been carried out through individual contacts and the chapter’s newsletter.

I have been chapter treasurer for a number of years, but also took on the challenge of reviving the corresponding secretary position’s responsibilities, including producing the monthly Dateline Online newsletter. 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 as vice president of the chapter’s SDX Foundation, its education arm that provides scholarships to undergraduate journalism students at area colleges.

I felt very honored to be selected the chapter’s Distinguished Service Award winner in 2019.

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 when it closed in 2014. I’m currently a copy editor at Warren Communications News, working on International Trade Today and Export Compliance 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 attract new minds and voices that carry these efforts forward into the future. 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.

Will things ever return to normal? In the current COVID-19 pandemic with social distancing required, we wonder how things got this crazy. We have been wondering that for about four years, if we’re honest as journalists trying to cover the democracy. We’ve been under near-constant attack by the current administration for doing our jobs. Let us continue doing our jobs, continue getting out the news, and continue identifying with each other as journalists of talent, truth and energy.

Recording Secretary: 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, 20 to 25 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.

Treasurer: Dan Kubiske

Worked as a freelance journalist in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Dominican Republic, Brazil and Honduras; and, of course, Washington D.C .area for 30 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 also currently serve as the co-chair of the national SPJ International Community and remain a (distant) member of the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club, where I served on the board of governors.

Board of Directors – 3 openings, each one for a two-year term

Julie Asher

Julie Asher is the national editor and intern coordinator at Catholic News Service, a Washington-based international news service for Catholic and other publications in the U.S. and around the globe. In 2018, she received the St. Francis de Sales Award from the Catholic Press Association for “outstanding contributions to Catholic journalism.”

She has been a member of SPJ for 35 years. She currently is a director on the board, but has previously been president of the chapter for several terms and also has served the chapter as vice president and board member. She was Region 2 director on the national SPJ board from 1997-2001. In 2015 she won the chapter’s Distinguished Service Award.

Candidate statement: Now more than ever the journalism ethics and high ideals SPJ sets for the journalism profession are needed, along with SPJ’s continuing efforts to demand transparency from government officials at all levels. I want to do my part as a chapter leader to promote SPJ’s high standards and to be part of all its efforts to push for transparency to serve the people’s right to know.

Jacqueline F. 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, D.C. Association of Black Journalists and serves as the national President of Religion Communicators Council. 

Jacqueline received her Bachelors of Arts degree in Communications from Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia.

Kenneth 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 (http://jostonjustice.blogspot.com/); he provides bulletin-board coverage of major Supreme Court actions and other legal affairs news by tweeting under the handle: @jostonjustice.