From the Louisville Pro SPJ Chapter:

Each year, the Louisville Pro SPJ Chapter gathers to honor the best work in journalism in Louisville. This year, we’ve set our annual awards dinner for June 21 beginning at 6:30 p.m. at Sawyer Hayes Community Center at Tom Sawyer Park. We’ll be giving out awards to students and professionals alike in a variety of categories that include print, online and broadcast.

You can enjoy a full buffet meal with us as part of your ticket price.

Cash bar will be available.

Questions? Call Robyn Davis Sekula at (502) 608-6125 or e-mail her at robyn@robynds.com.

Buy tickets online here:

http://spjlou2012.eventbrite.com/

If you’d rather pay by check, please send your check to:

Kathy Francis
Doe Anderson
620 West Main St.
Louisville, KY 40202

You can find information on past award winners here: http://www.spjlouisville.com/awards/

If you’re purchasing tickets, please note that individuals, not organizations, are members of SPJ. So if you’re buying on behalf of a group, you will need to ask for membership numbers from those in your group who are SPJ members. If you’d like to join, great! You can do that online at www.spj.org.

The Louisville SPJ chapter will present a program for current and aspiring freelancers at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 15, at the University of Louisville. The program is free and open to the public and will feature a panel of editors who will address questions and give their best tips.

Speakers include Sarah Kelley with LEO; Judy Berzof with Business First; Shea Van Hoy with the News and Tribune; and Robyn Davis Sekula, a writer, editor and consultant. Selene Phillips with the University of Louisville will moderate the discussion. In addition to the panel presentation and discussion, participants will have an opportunity to interact with the experts.

The event will be in the Cochran Auditorium in Strickler Hall, room 102 on the U of L campus. Parking will be available west of Strickler Hall in the Speed Art Museum Garage for $2 an hour or a maximum $6 charge.

Learn to be a digital first communicator from one of the nation’s foremost experts.

As director of community engagement for Digital First Media and the Journal Register Co., Steve Buttry leads workshops around the country on topics from using social media on the beat to live blogging and from crowdsourcing to community engagement.

On March 30, Buttry will lead four free sessions for professionals and students in the Griffin Hall Digitorium at Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, Ky. Come to one or all.

Becoming a digital first journalist– 9 a.m. – 10:15

Reporting with social media tools– 10:30 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.

Finding a job in the digital age– 1:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.

Developing timeless skills for a new era– 3 p.m.  – 4:15 p.m.

For more information, visit http://coievents.nku.edu or email Michele Day at daymi@nku.edu

These workshops are sponsored by Northern Kentucky University’s Department of Communication, the Cincinnati Pro and NKU chapters and the national office of the Society of Professional Journalists and NKU Student Media.

SPJ DePaul’’s Freedom of Information Panel discussion on Feb. 16 offered tips on using FOIA requests and insight to how investigative journalists work.

The two-hour panel, moderated by DePaul adjunct journalism instructor and former TV news reporter Anne Kavanaugh, featured panelists Tim Novak and Chris Fusco of the Chicago Sun-Times and Mick Dumke of the Chicago Reader. The free event drew nearly 50 students and professional journalists at DePaul’’s Daley Building.

Craig Newman of the Chicago Sun-Times archived live-tweets and background from the event in a Storify.

Twitter is the wildly popular social media tool that allows users to post short updates to followers around the world. It’s become a useful way for many to find instant news alerts.

In two recent, high-profile Lexington, Ky.,  murder trials, thousands of people found themselves glued to Twitter reports from a handful of Lexington journalists assigned to the courtroom. Twitter provided a way for people to follow the testimony, get the verdicts and go inside the courtroom like never before.

“Tweeting the Trial” is a panel discussion organized by the Bluegrass Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. It will feature print and television reporters who covered the Glenn Doneghy and Donald Southworth murder trials including Lexington Herald-Leader reporter Josh Kegley, WKYT reporter Andy Cunningham and WLEX reporter Adam Baker.

“Tweeting the Trial” will be held 7:30-8:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, in the main-floor conference room at the Lexington Herald-Leader a the intersection of Main Street and  Midland Avenue It is free and open to the public.

SPJ DePaul completed its professional development campus chapter requirement on Oct. 28 with a “10-Minute Mentors” event at its downtown Loop campus newsroom.

Student members brought their resumes and sought career advice from some of the leading journalists in the Chicago area. Details and photos are available at

http://spjdepaul.com/2011/11/01/spj-depaul-10-minute-mentors-program/

Region 5 campus chapter programming grants for 2011-2012 will help finance programs ranging from a symposium on the future of college radio news to a freedom of information forum.

Here are the chapters and programs that will be supported by $100 grants from Region 5 Director Liz Hansen:

Loyola University of Chicago–Future of College Radio News Symposium
DePaul University–Freedom of Information Forum
Eastern Kentucky University–Local Reporting Made Local
Northern Kentucky University–Lunch with the Pros
Western Kentucky University–First Amendment Free Food Festival

Arab studies media scholar Adel Iskandar and Louisville reporter Laura Ungar will discuss issues in international reporting, including how to connect the global to the local, during a program at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, in the Jaggers Room at Powell Student Center on the Eastern Kentucky University campus. The EKU SPJ chapter is sponsoring the event, which is free and open to the public.

Iskandar is a scholar of Arab studies whose research focuses on media and communication. He is the author and coauthor of several works including Al-Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism (Basic Books). Iskandar’s work deals with media, identity and politics, and he has lectured extensively on these topics at universities worldwide. His latest publication is an edited volume entitled Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (University of California Press). His two forthcoming works are books on the role of new media and dissidence in the Arab world. Iskandar teaches at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the Communication, Culture and Technology program at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He is a frequent guest and commentator on U.S. and global media including CNN, NPR, CBS, ABC, NBC, Al-Jazeera, RT, BBC, Deutsche Welle and many others.

Ungar is the medical writer at The Courier-Journal in Louisville. She was born and raised in Connecticut and has been a journalist for 21 years, previously working as a reporter at The Hartford (Conn.) Courant and The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal. She has written major projects on cervical cancer in India, Kentucky’s poor health, the prescription drug abuse crisis and cancer in Delaware, and has won more than 20 national, regional and local awards for her work — as well the international Croly award for the India project. She also freelances and has been published in The Washington Post and The Boston Globe.

Journalists are doing a lot more in the field with tools designed for reporting and posting while on the go. Find out how on Monday, Nov. 14, when Chip Mahaney, Director of Digital Content for Scripps Media, Inc., speaks to the SPJ Louisville Pro Chapter on the topic of Mobile Journalism. He’ll be presenting at Interactive Media Lab, 124 N. First St., Louisville, beginning at 7 p.m. Chip is a nationally known speaker on this topic and we’re glad to have him in Louisville. The presentation is free and open to the public. Please mark your calendars and invite a friend.

Submitted by Robyn Davis Sekula

Please see the invitation below from former national SPJ President Al Cross. A reply card follows the invitation.

Dear SPJ member:

This is your special invitation to the inaugural Al Smith Award Dinner, to be held Thursday, June 2 at Fasig-Tipton Kentucky, the horse-sales pavilion a half mile north of Interstate 64/75 on Newtown Pike in Lexington.

The Al Smith Award will be presented annually to a journalist or publisher who has demonstrated public service through community journalism in Kentucky, or anywhere by a current or former Kentuckian, with preference given to those outside metropolitan areas. The award’s first recipient will be its namesake: Albert P. Smith Jr., who owned weekly newspapers in Kentucky and Tennessee, was founding host of KET’s “Comment on Kentucky” and was main founder of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which is co-sponsoring the award with SPJ’s Bluegrass Pro Chapter.

The Bluegrass Chapter conceived this award, is co-sponsoring the dinner, and will receive 25 percent of the net proceeds from the event. Sponsorships are also available, via the attached reply card. Just send a check made out to the University of Kentucky with “Rural Journalism” on the memo line and send it to the address below. Please make your reservation by Thursday, May 26.

Thanks,

Al Cross

Director, Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

Asst. extension professor, School of Journalism and Telecommunications

122 Grehan Journalism Building, University of Kentucky

Lexington KY 40506-0042

859-257-3744

www.RuralJournalism.org

Read The Rural Blog at http://irjci.blogspot.com

Read Kentucky Health News at http://kyhealthnews.blogspot.com