President’s Letter from San Antonio
Here is the final President’s Letter from the board packets for the Sept. 5 meeting of the national board of directors at the Excellence in Journalism Conference in San Antonio. Read the highlights of the year, including major accomplishments by the SPJ volunteers and staff.
MEMORANDUM
FROM: J. Alex Tarquinio, SPJ National President
TO: SPJ national board of directors
RE: Final report for Sept. 5, 2019 board meeting
Colleagues,
At this crucial moment for our Society, we should not rush headlong into the future without pausing to reflect on the accomplishments made during this pivotal year. Despite the challenges of operating without a permanent executive director, our tireless volunteers and staff have achieved great things in this, the 110th anniversary of the Society of Professional Journalists.
PRESIDENT’S REPORT
The national committees have been going full steam ahead. Here are some top-level highlights from the reports to follow in this packet:
- Membership: Colin DeVries, the committee chair who took charge midterm, created a successful summer membership drive that resulted in 220 new members (versus 148 in the same period a year ago) and 607 renewing members (versus 296.)
- Diversity: Rebecca Aguilar and Ivette Davila-Richards, the new committee chair and vice chair, have revamped the Dori Maynard Diversity Leadership Program from top to bottom. The committee is hosting six extraordinary Fellows out of a pool of 21 applicants.
- Ethics: The committee chaired by Lynn Walsh has created a 45-minute presentation that can be shared with non-journalists. Once again, SPJ’s Ethics Week was promoted on the Reuters billboard in Times Square.
- Generation-J Committee: Tess Fox revived the committee, which has decided to focus on two projects going forward: a student chapter guidebook and a mentorship program.
- Education Committee: Under the leadership of co-chairs Rebecca Tallent and Leticia Steffen, the successful #Press4Education program continues to grow, matching 186 volunteers with teachers to date.
- Legal Defense Fund Committee: The committee, chaired by Hagit Limor, acted on more than 55 cases and resurrected the silent and live auctions.
- Freelance Community: The community, chaired by Hilary Niles, continues to grow, primarily through Facebook and Twitter, and is seeking greater awareness within SPJ.
- International Community: The community, which is led by co-chairs Elle Toussi and Dan Kubiske, has forged new partnerships with One Free Press Coaliton and the International Senior Lawyers Project.
Meanwhile, the national board has begun some painstaking and important transitional work, some of which will continue into the new term.
- Policy Review Task Force: The task force, chaired by Matt Hall, conducted a thorough inventory and review of national board policies.
- Strategic Planning Task Force: The task force, chaired by Victor Hernandez, initiated work on the first strategic plan since 2006, an objective that our executive search consultants advise us would be best to attain sooner rather than later, with the involvement of our new full-time executive director.
- Executive Director Search Committee: The SPJ board unanimously decided to go forward with a professional search firm, rather than to lead the search process itself, as SPJ has done in the past. Search Committee Chair Hagit Limor is the point of contact for the consultants. The board policy review and the drafting of a strategic plan are integral to this search, as many qualified applicants would view the lack of strong policies or planning as a negative.
- The 110th Anniversary Task Force: On a lighter note, this task force chaired by Yvette Walker has generated some fun ideas, such as a Spotify list of songs about news.
Furthermore, despite the high turnover at HQ in the first half of the 2018-2019 term, I was determined not to drop the ball on the key goals I had set when I ran for this office two years ago—improving diversity at all levels of the Society, while increasing our press freedom advocacy and forging new partnerships. Some highlights of these goals:
- We obtained a generous $25,000 grant from the Craig Newmark Philanthropies to hold a journalism nonprofit summit ahead of World Press Freedom Day. Held over two days in New York, 82 people from more than 30 press freedom groups attended the summit and helped craft a joint resolution.
- On World Press Freedom Day, May 3, I spoke on a panel at the United Nations before an audience of 400 to discuss the SPJ journalism nonprofit summit the week before, which had focused on threats to journalism and democracy in a time of disinformation.
- Bryan Carmody, the San Francisco journalist whose home was raided by the police in search of clues to a confidential police source, spoke for the first time publicly about the case at an event that I moderated, which was hosted by the SPJ NorCal Pro chapter at the Medill School in downtown San Francisco. This was an example of a successful collaboration between SPJ local and national leaders and our partners.
- I served as a drafting committee member in the Journalism Trust Initiative, a project of the Reporters Without Borders/Reporters sans frontières (RSF).
- Along the way, key SPJ leaders—including Rod Hicks, Lynn Walsh, Paul Fletcher, Danielle McLean and myself—have issued a steady stream of advocacy statements and media interviews. See Addendum A.
INTERIM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S REPORT
On May 13, two weeks after the departure of the SPJ executive director, the executive committee of the SPJ national board and the top two officers of the SPJ Foundation held a conference call to determine what to do while SPJ searched for a permanent executive director. The President-Elect had done research on hiring an interim executive director. However, the leaders from both boards on the May 13 call determined that SPJ could not afford to take this step, so they asked for a report focused on having the SPJ President continue as acting interim while hiring business consultants to do two things: search for a full-time executive director and draft an on-site managerial assessment of headquarters to inform this search and help guide the next full-time executive director.
I prepared this report based on advice from SPJ Legal Counsel Mark Bailen and numerous interviews with executive consultants. The report was unanimously approved in a meeting of the full SPJ national board on June 1. SPJ Foundation President Irwin Gratz also approved this report, which detailed a financial analysis by SPJ Controller Jake Koenig that showed the cost of hiring a consultant for both the executive search and the on-site assessment would largely be offset by not paying for an interim executive director. A public version of the report, which excluded just the private bids and financial analysis, was shared with SPJ members via the Freedom of the Prez blog on June 5. See Addendum B, or this link:
The staff has performed heroically over the past four months, despite the lack of a permanent executive director on site. After a year of intense turnover in Indianapolis through April, we’ve had no staff departures other than the communications employee who left to get married and move out of state, which had been expected. Meanwhile, we have added three new employees since April, Zoë Berg and Ashlynn Neumeyer, two communications interns, and Kathy Parker, a full-time accountant.
The staff, both old and new hires, have bonded together as a team and their positive attitude has ensured the smooth execution of the SDX banquet in June and the Excellence in Journalism Conference. We are expecting about 1800 attendees in San Antonio, about the same as the last time we had all three conference organizers in 2017. Additionally, we’ve brought back some of the cherished traditions that we had to forego last year because of the staff turnover at that time, such as the Legal Defense Fund auction and the Pro Chapter Leaders meeting. The staff has also negotiated new agreements with some of our existing partners, without losing a single partner despite being in a transitional period.
Here are some top-level highlights of the staff’s recent accomplishments:
- EIJ is expected to have 1800 attendees, more than 70 sessions, and 92 exhibit booths. Key events that have been arranged by the staff include breakout sessions, super sessions, the J-Expo, opening night reception, President’s Installation Banquet and reception, Scripps reception, Student Union, donor reception, LDF auction, three board meetings, 10 committee meetings, 9 Regional meetings, Freelance Corner meetings, EIJ News, 110th committee table and SPJ tee-shirt sales.
- The Knight Foundation approved a $45,000 ($15,000 per year over three years) grant to support the Excellence in Journalism Conference.
- More than 70 awards were presented, and we had 170 guests at the SDX banquet on June 21 at the National Press Club, which ran like clockwork, despite the fact that many of the new staff were working the banquet for the first time.
- The Communications team managed by Jennifer Royer issued around 20 advocacy statements on press freedom issues. (See an advocacy list as an addendum to this report.)
- The Quill magazine redesign is going well under new editor Lou Harry. Quillmag.com had its highest monthly views ever in June with 6695 hits.
- Rod Hicks wrapped up the SPJ Foundation-funded Casper Project with a well-attended public forum in Casper Wyoming, where Irwin and I both gave brief introductory remarks.
- Caroline Escobar managed a summer membership drive amid EIJ preparations that resulted in a 47% increase in new members and twice as many renewing members compared to the same period last year.
- At the April mid-year board meeting, the SPJ board decided to move the 2021 conference to New Orleans. Basharat Saleem negotiated a new contract with the Hyatt Regency New Orleans. The room rate will be $149 (compared with a $198 four-year average) with a total of 1193 hotel rooms.
- In addition to the usual graphics and website updates by Tony Peterson and Billy O’Keefe, both worked on special projects this year: to include the World Press Freedom Day Summit; the redesign of the SPJ Foundation logo and branding, due to the name change; and the 110th Anniversary celebration, which required the logo, pin, ads, thank you cards, Quill addition, conference ribbon and step and repeat banner.
- SPJ is to provide complete event support for the JAWS CAMP in late September, with Basharat and Matt Kent from the staff to be on site.
- The Google program, now managed by Lou, is on track. So far in 2019, 2562 journalists have been trained through the SPJ Google Tools training program and it is closing in on the projected total of 4000 for the year.
- Facebook agreed to provide further funding to carry their Journalism project, managed by Lynn Walsh, through to the end of 2019. Since the program was launched in March 2018, SPJ and Facebook have led more than 150 trainings in newsrooms, classrooms and at conferences in Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C. and 41 of the 50 states. To date, the program has trained more than 4,000 journalists and counting.
- Controller Jake Koenig hired a full-time accountant, which I approved during my first trip to Indianapolis as acting interim executive director, based on his identifying understaffing as the reason for slow financial reporting. Jake and Kathy, the new full-time accountant, and Toni Sculky, the part-time accountant, are now working together to bring reporting up to date.
- Despite all the hard work and many distractions, both the staff and volunteers found time to plan for and celebrate SPJ’s 110th Anniversary, which culminated in a ceremony organized by Larry Messing at DePauw University just steps from the spot where SPJ was founded.
- Last but certainly by no means least, none of this would have been possible, throughout this demanding interim period, without the stalwart Linda Hall keeping the staff on track. It is hardly surprising that they refer to her as their “den mother.”
In closing, amid the current climate of uncertainty for our profession, we, nevertheless, have ample reasons to look optimistically towards SPJ’s future. Our mission to educate the current and future generations of journalists, while defending journalism ethics and advocating for open government and press freedom, has never been more relevant and worthwhile. I’d like to end by saying it has been a privilege to pilot SPJ through this challenging transitional period. It is my fervent hope that the swift resolution of the executive director search and the realization of the strategic plan will steer this organization, which has meant so much to me in the 12 years that I have served it as a volunteer, into a brighter tomorrow.
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Tags: Alex Tarquinio, J. Alex Tarquinio
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