On Monday, the SPJ Board conducted a Skype conference call meeting to appoint a Region 12 director to serve in the interim until national elections in September. The current director Tony Hernandez left Region 12 in December of last year to take a position in Region 10. Per the SPJ bylaws, he could remain RD for up to six months following his move. Replacements are made via a board vote.

Amanda Womac

The position will be filled by Amanda Womac, who is a member of the East Tennessee Professional Chapter and most recently served as the Region 12 treasurer. Four people showed interest in the position, which goes to show we have amazing people in SPJ willing and capable of taking leadership roles. We are excited at all of the candidates’ interest in serving SPJ, and are eager to have them get more involved!

The position will be filled permanently through the online election process during EIJ15. Any member of SPJ who is located in Region 12 can still run for the position. If interested, please contact staff member Tara Puckey via email for more details.

In the spirit of transparency, we would normally post roll call votes in the minutes, but we have been asked to share that information now. Here are the votes from Monday’s Skype meeting regarding the Region 12 position:

Roll call vote for Amanda Womac (13 yes, 1 no, 2 abstain):

Dana Neuts: Abstain

Fletcher: Yes

David Cuillier: Yes

Lynn Walsh: Yes

Bill McCloskey: Yes

Alex Tarquinio: Yes

Jordan Gass-Pooré: Yes

Andy Schotz: No

Michael Koretzky: Yes

Joe Radske: Yes

Rob McLean: Yes

Eddye Gallagher: Yes

Tom Johnson: Yes

Pia Hallenberg: Yes

Matt Hall: Yes

Tony Hernandez: Abstain

Board members not listed above were not available to participate in the call.

Also during the meeting, the board voted unanimously to approve the Generation J Community, which is transitioning from a committee to a community structure. Although it may seem like semantics, the differences between a community and committee are vast.

A committee is a small group of people that serves at the pleasure of the president. A committee manages projects and may provide resources for others. By its nature, a committee is usually made up of about 10-15 people, and it focuses on work at the president’s direction.

A community, on the other hand, is a large group of people interested in a particular topic. They are self-governing and the community grows organically based on the needs and desires of its members. If you have an interest in issues facing young journalists or journalists in career transition, consider joining the Generation J Community. SPJ also has communities for members interested in freelance, international, digital and student journalism.

Please let me know if you have any questions. I’m happy to help!

Thank you,

Dana E. Neuts
SPJ President

Guest post by Alex Veeneman, community coordinator and chair of SPJ Digital

In this ever changing media environment, students need to do more to stand out, from work placements and student media opportunities, writing on the side, either on a freelance basis or with online or print publications. As students try to build their brand and get their foot in the door of journalism, SPJ can help, especially through participation in our communities.

An SPJ community is a unique way to get involved with SPJ and to make it your own. Inside an SPJ community, you can get insight on how to improve your craft, or get a new perspective on how to approach a subject. You might find new ways of doing things that will bring both personal and professional benefits in the long term. This can be invaluable for students, from networking to potential leads for employment after you graduate.

SPJ benefits too. You can lend your expertise on a particular subject and help make journalism better for you and your peers in the industry. You can also get involved regardless of if you are affiliated with a chapter. Important discussions can be conducted about issues in the industry, programming can be created, and resources can be made available that will bring significant benefits to journalism as a whole.

Recently, we unveiled our student community, dedicated to tackling issues concerning student journalists and student journalism. This community brings many benefits to the SPJ’s student membership, by tackling issues important to students and helping bring different student media perspectives to help students get ready for the ever changing world of journalism.

In addition to our student community, we have a digital community, a freelance community, an international community, and Generation J will be turning into a community. All of these communities rely on enthusiastic volunteers, collaboration and ideas, and can also help play a role in getting students ready to enter the industry.

Being involved in a community is an incredible opportunity. You can let your voice be heard and also make a significant difference in the future of your SPJ, and I want to make that opportunity possible for all SPJ members, especially students.

I implore you to get involved, and help build your career with your SPJ. You won’t regret it.

Alex Veeneman, a recent university graduate, is SPJ’s Community Coordinator and interim chair of SPJ Digital. Veeneman also serves as Deputy Editor and Media Editor for Kettle Magazine (www.kettlemag.co.uk), an online publication in the UK. He is based in Chicago.

To get involved with the communities, you can email (alex.veeneman01@gmail.com) or tweet Alex (@alex_veeneman) for more information.

It’s been about a month since I wrote my last “highlights” post. There is so much going on within SPJ, but also in the news industry that it is hard to keep up with it all…and to remember to keep you up to date. Here are some of the latest developments in our world, in no particular order:

– Today the national SPJ board approved a $32,000 expenditure (to be paid from surplus from the last fiscal year) for a much needed tech upgrade. Spearheaded by Tara Puckey and Billy O’Keefe after months of research, we have a thorough plan of action to update our database and website. We approved a three-phase plan that will take place over the course of the next year. We’ll keep you informed of our progress, changes that will impact you, etc. Bottom line: this is an exciting opportunity for SPJ to upgrade its technology to better serve our members and website visitors.

– Today we issued a statement, along with Region 4 SPJ leaders and the Ohio Newspaper Association, urging Ohio lawmakers to vote “no” to Ohio’s proposed HB663, legislation that is being shoved through to try to protect medical professionals who carry out executions and drug makers who make the drugs used in executions, as well as to make all information and records related to an execution or death sentence confidential.

If passed, the legislation will ignore sunshine laws, eliminate transparency in executions and make covering capital punishment that much more difficult for journalists.  This legislation is a travesty on a variety of levels. If you’d like to help fight the legislation, which could be voted on tomorrow, Nov. 19, see the bottom of the statement for ways to oppose the bill. A big thank you to regional director Patti Newberry for spearheading SPJ’s efforts on this!

– Last week I attended the sentencing of former regional director Scott Cooper who embezzled $43,220 from the Oklahoma Pro SPJ chapter. I made a statement about the sentencing on Friday, and posted my reaction to the hearing on Saturday.

– On Nov. 3, SPJ issued a statement about the FBI’s impersonation of an AP reporter and the alleged actions of the St. Louis County Police Department to get the FAA to impose a “no fly zone” in Ferguson, Missouri to keep the press out. These issues underscore the need for a broader conversation between journalists and law enforcement agencies across the country to figure out a way to better understand our respective roles and to ensure freedom of the press.

– SPJ leaders wrote about #Pointergate, Free Speech Week, Freedom of the Press and Freelancing in blogs over the last week.

– Pashtana Usufzy of Las Vegas was named SPJ’s Volunteer of the Month for Nov. 2014. Congratulations!

– SPJ Announced a Free Webinar for Tues., Nov. 25 at 1 pm (ET) – Beyond Facebook and Twitter: Digital Tools for all Journalists taught by digital journalist Kim Bui (@kimbui) and co-founder of #WJCHAT. Register here.

– Region 12 Director Tony Hernandez has accepted a position at The Oregonian. He will remain on the board up to six months after his move, as allowed by SPJ by-laws. In the spring, we’ll put a call out to accept nominations and applications for a replacement. If you have questions or are interested, contact Tony directly.

– Nominations were opened for the Sigma Delta Chi and Mark of Excellence awards and for the national high school essay contest.

– Gen J will become a community! Learn more here. Want to get involved? Contact Gen J chair Claudia Amezcua.

There is so much going on at SPJ HQ and around the country that I have undoubtedly forgotten some big news. If so, I apologize. It is unintentional. Please post your update in the comments or email me, and I can include it next time.

Thanks to all of our dedicated volunteers for their hard work and commitment to SPJ!

~ Dana Neuts, President

I’m excited to share that Generation J, one of SPJ’s active committees, has decided to become a community. We are working out the details for the launch, but committee chair Claudia Amezcua shared the news with me last week. Claudia made the announcement on the Gen J blog last week. She also shared Gen J’s goals for the coming year which include broadening their reach to journalists at all levels of their career and to partner with other committees and communities. You can read about their goals here.

If you are interested in becoming part of the community or learning more, you can reach Claudia via email or on Twitter.

This brings our community count to four:  Freelance, Digital, International and Gen J! The SPJ family is growing. Want to be a part of it? Contact me for details.

It’s been three weeks since my last post, and a lot has happened in SPJ and the journalism world in that short time. Here are a few highlights:

Earlier this week, we lost journalism legend Ben Bradlee of The Washington Post. He inspired an entire generation of journalists and took editing to a new level. He will be missed. Here is a nice piece in The Washington Post remembering his contributions.

SPJ Georgia and regional director Michael Koretzky fought for and supported George Chidi, a freelance journalist in Georgia, after Thomas Owens, a candidate for DeKalb County commissioner, sought a temporary protective order and filed an application for a warrant on stalking charges against the journalist. The protective order and application were both dismissed, upholding the First Amendment and helping to protect Chidi’s right to do his job. Thanks to SPJ Georgia and Koretzky for fighting on Chidi’s behalf.

SPJ, the Student Press Law Center and 18 other organizations sent a letter to education leaders to renounce the actions of the Neshaminy School District in Bucks County, Pennsylvania for punishing student journalists and their adviser for refusing to use the term “redskins” in the Playwickian, a school publication. Principal Rob McGee suspended the journalism adviser for two days without pay, removed the Playwickian editor from her position for a month, and the newspaper was fined $1,200, the cost of the June edition which omitted the Native American mascot name.

In other SPJ news:

The membership committee, led by Robyn Sekula, is working on a master plan to outline its goals and strategies for the coming year. The committee also named its October Volunteer of the Month – Lee Anne Peck of the University of Northern Colorado. Congratulations, Lee Anne!

The SPJ international journalism community, led by Carlos Restrepo, is also working on a master plan, breaking its work into three primary goals and subcommittees. More on that once the community has had time to review and comment on it.

The journalism education committee is publishing a book in January titled “Still Captive? History, Law and the Teaching of High School Journalism.” The project is the result of three years of research and a survey of nearly 250 Journalism Education Association members in 47 states.

The ethics committee continues to be busy, educating others on the revised Code of Ethics, preparing supplemental materials for SPJ.org and speaking on ethical issues. Check out this post from ethics chair Andrew Seaman on the ethical reporting of Ebola.

The awards and honors committee, led by Andy Schotz, has been working with Abbi Martzall, SPJ’s awards coordinator, to review our awards criteria and make recommendations for changes. Sarah Bauer, the committee’s co-chair, is coordinating the swaps for local and regional SPJ chapter contests. If she hasn’t already, she’ll be contacting awards coordinators in the near future to plan for swaps for next year’s contest season.

The Generation J committee, led by Claudia Amezcua, has been working with her committee on its plan for the year and will be working with secretary-treasurer Lynn Walsh and past president John Ensslin on the recommendations made by the futures task force in June. Two goals for Gen J this year are to broaden the committee’s mission to include journalists at all career levels and to partner with other committees to offer training opportunities via joint Google hangouts.

Led by SPJ past president David Cuillier, the FOI committee has been hard at work, developing a blogging and tweeting strategy for the committee to handling breaking FOI news and to be proactive on FOI issues. For FOI resources, check out the FOI page on SPJ.org.

At SPJ headquarters, staff has been busy on many fronts, including planning for EIJ15 (yes, already!), sending out new ethics posters and bookmarks, working on affinity partnerships to offer additional benefits to our members, and developing communications strategies for how and when to communicate with the public and other media organizations.

Recently, I had the opportunity to travel to Phoenix on behalf of SPJ where I talked to ASU journalism students about how to get started freelancing and get those first critical clips. I also met with SDX president Robert Leger and had a fun evening with SPJ members of the Valley of the Sun Pro chapter where we celebrated some local journalism and PR successes and talked about what’s next for SPJ in the year ahead. I’ve also been working with communications staff at HQ to create an outreach plan to help promote our communities. Up next: a visit to Peninsula College in Port Angeles, Washington, finding a volunteer to help support our communities, and planning our January executive committee meeting.

I am sure I have omitted a letter SPJ signed onto or committee projects and, if so, I apologize. The omission is unintentional, but email me so I can include it next time. As always, thanks for your support of SPJ. If you have questions, concerns or ideas, you can email me at SPJDANA @ GMAIL.COM.

The newsroom was a pair of converted motel rooms stitched together into a space about the size of a double wide trailer.

The reporters were 23 college journalists who came from universities in Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Tennessee, New York, Oklahoma, Connecticut and Florida.

Unlike many of their peers who spent Labor Day at a beach or a barbecue, these young journalists spent an intense and often chaotic 36 hours reporting, writing and editing an edition of The Homeless Voice, a monthly newspaper published by the COSAC Shelter in Hollywood, Fla.

They were all there as part of the 4th Annual “Will Write For Food” program, which is co-sponsored by the South Florida chapter of SPJ, a very creative effort that is the brainchild of Region 3 Director Michael Koretzky.

I joined the effort this year as an adviser and to learn about the program. What I witnessed was downright inspirational.

If any of you harbor doubts about the future of journalism, you ought to pay attention to these young journalists and what they were able to accomplish in one crazy, frenetic and sometimes improvisational weekend.

The spirit of the venture can be summed up by an off-handed remark I overheard one student telling another.

“I really like putting myself in awkward situations,” she said.

To me, that quip sums up the place where journalism lives. We do some of our best working through awkward situations.

The participants did so with a great amount of enthusiasm and bravado.

Take Chris Whitten, for example. Whitten is a University of Memphis senior and student editor who at one brief point in his life was homeless.

Most people would want to run as far away as they could from that experience. Whitten decided to go in the opposite direction.

He was determined to spend a night as a homeless person on the streets of Fort Lauderdale. So wearing a set of baggy clothes provided by the shelter, Whitten spent the night reporting the story from first-hand experience.

We all held our breath hoping he wouldn’t get arrested by police enforcing the city’s loitering ordinance. But instead he came back with this remarkable story about a spontaneous act of generosity by a homeless man.

The sheer range of stories these students came up with on the fly was breathtaking.

-One did a story about how violence against the homeless often is a way of life for shelter residents.

-Another wrote an interesting story about how time seems to pass more slowly for shelter residents.

-A photojournalism student gave five disposable cameras to shelter residents to photograph their world and help her write the captions.

-One student asked for a black light so he could see what the shelter floor’s looked like. This led to a somewhat gruesome but interesting story on what it takes to keep a shelter clean.

-And another did a hilarious story mimicking the unusual work-out routine and smoking habits of the shelter director.

Click here to find these stories, photographs and videos on a website that the students created.

Koretzky presides over this gathering with his signature snarky sense of humor and attention to detail.

For example, when one student said she wanted to create a new website for the “Voice” in just 36 hours, Koretzky challenged her by saying it couldn’t be done. She had it up and running within an hour.

Once it was up, Koretzky noticed one of the designers had created a masthead that read, “The Homless Voice.”

“Are you kidding me?” he asked. “You’re killing me!” he said.

“Looks good though,” he added.

Under the watchful gaze of two police officers, shelter staff and several advisors, a few of the students tagged along as shelter employees went out at night on their outreach tour, trying to coax people living on the street into coming into the shelter.

We travelled in a van, two unmarked police cars, an old ambulance and an old black and white police car that the shelter now owns.

For the students, it was an eye-opening experience talking one-to-one with people living under a highway bridge or in a tent in the woods.

There were several discussions on ethics, source credibility, anonymity, reporting technique and story writing. It was akin to a graduate seminar on real-world reporting done in real time.

By 3 a.m. Labor Day morning, I decided to call it a night, but not before telling the students (some of whom were still editing stories and working on the website) how proud I was of them and their efforts.

They give me great hope about the future of our profession.

This post is an expanded version of my forthcoming first column for Quill (for the Nov/Dec issue). Think of this as a roadmap for the year ahead and a lineup of who is doing what.

It’s a bit long, but it will give you a good idea of the scope and breadth of the work SPJ has taken on this year.

The unsung heroes of our Society are the volunteers who log countless hours working on various national committees.

As your new president, I’ve been blessed to inherit a very strong set of committees. I’ve added some people and created some new committees, but for the most part there’s a fair number of folks who agreed to continue on this year.

In my view, committees are working laboratories where SPJ policies are drafted and vetted. I’ve tasked these folks with testing out several new initiatives. Here are brief descriptions of some of the assignments they are working on.

– The Programming Committee, chaired by Jeremy Steele, is a new panel aimed at helping professional and student chapters increase the level of SPJ activities. One project they are working on is to create a “speakers’ bureau” of various experts within SPJ who would be willing to travel at minimal cost to talk to chapters across the country.

As part of the programming committee, Holly Fisher will continue to produce chapter-hosted programs for Studio SPJ.

– The expanded Membership Committee, chaired by Holly Edgell, will be forming a team of volunteers to reach out to lapsed members to encourage them to re-up. The group is also working on coordinating a month-long national membership drive in March 2012. They are also studying the feasibility of creating an institutional membership for news organizations.

-This year Membership also has a new subcommittee chaired by Tara Puckey. This group will focus their efforts on building collegiate membership.

– The Ethics Committee, chaired by Kevin Smith, plans to begin the long and deliberate process of reviewing our Code of Ethics for possible revisions in the light of the challenges posed by a digital age. The committee also hopes to author some position papers on topics such as political coverage, checkbook journalism, plagiarism, etc.

-The Diversity Committee, chaired by Curtis Lawrence, is at work on reviving the Rainbow Source Book, working to strengthen ties with other journalism organizations and partnering with chapters and other journalism groups to monitor content and hiring in media.

– The Freedom of Information Committee, chaired by Linda Petersen, will be working on an encore production of the highly popular “Access Across America Tour” that Secretary-Treasurer Dave Cuillier created two years ago. This year, we’re hoping to have more than one trainer making regional tours to newsrooms and chapters across the nation.

The FOI Committee also is doing an update on prison media access, and for Sunshine Week they will be surveying Washington, D.C.-area reporters on their relationship with federal government PIOs to gain insight into source relationships and the role that public relations professionals play in the free flow of information between government and the media.

– The Government Relations Committee, chaired by Al Cross, will work with SPJ leaders and the FOI Committee to advocate for open government at all levels from localities to Washington, D.C. One special emphasis will be fighting efforts to repeal or curtail public notice advertising by state and local government.

Government Relations also will be working closely with the FOI Committee. Al and Linda will each serve as members of the other committee.

– The Communications Committee, chaired by Lauren Bartlett, is working on a strategic communications plan aimed at creating unified messaging and ideas for key initiatives on our core missions. The committee also is working on a plan to position SPJ national leaders as experts on various media topics.

-Lauren also is chairing a subcommittee whose purpose will be to produce a white paper on where our industry is headed and that will list some innovative best practices by media organizations.

– The International Journalism Committee, chaired by Ricardo Sandoval Palos,  is evaluating what our policy should be when individuals or groups of journalists apply to join SPJ or to start their own chapter, as a group of journalism students in Qatar did two years ago.

– The Awards Committee, chaired by Ginny Frizzi, is weighing whether it would make sense to honor some of our recently deceased SPJ leaders by naming some of our awards after them.

– The Freelance Committee’s special project this year will be to develop a freelancers’ resource guide. Dana Neuts chairs this group.

-The Legal Defense Fund, chaired by Hagit Limor, will continue assisting journalists by funding court battles for their First Amendment rights while working with staff to explore new options for fundraising.

– The Professional Development Committee, chaired by Deb Wenger, will continue producing online tutorials for our members and will try this year to offer some webinars.

-The Journalism Education Committee, chaired by Rebecca Talent,  is looking at ways to support high school journalism programs that are facing elimination because of budget cuts. The committee also is sharing syllabi and best practices with new faculty and encouraging more minority applicants for the Mark of Excellence awards.

– The Digital Media Committee, chaired by Jennifer Peebles, will be working on a special project aimed at creating an interactive digital timeline that will allow visitors to our website to explore SPJ’s rich, 103-year history.

-The GenJ Committee, chaired by Lynn Walsh, is continuing to blog on its excellent site on the SPJ blogs network. They are also trying to come up with a more contemporary and less retro name for the “Liner Notes” blog.

-I have also appointed a special committee, chaired by past president Irwin Gratz, to study whether it’s feasible and desirable to create virtual chapters or affinity groups that would consist of members who share a common professional interest, such as freelancing or a specialty beat like religion or court reporting.

– And last but not least, I’ve asked Mike Koretzky to lead a “Blue Sky” Committee. I’ve asked this group if we had $10,000 or $50,000 or $100,000, how could we best spend it? There’s no money in the budget for this, but let’s first see what this panel recommends.

Will all of these initiatives be adopted? Not necessarily. Where there are policy questions involved, the SPJ board of directors will ultimately decide.

But thanks to the efforts of all these volunteers, I feel like our SPJ year is off to a good start.