Hello, all. It has only been a few weeks since I posted the last update, but we’ve accomplished so much that it is almost baffling. I am so proud of SPJ staff and volunteers for their hard work and dedication to the cause. Here are some of the projects we’ve been involved in over the last few weeks (you might want to pull up a chair – there is a lot of good stuff here!):

• Community elections for SPJ Digital & Freelance were launched. Details here.
• SPJ Georgia attended two separate hearings of Atlanta journalists who were arrested last week during the Ferguson protest. Charges have been dropped in both cases. Reps from SPJ Georgia plan to attend a roundtable discussion tomorrow with Atlanta PD. Thanks to SPJ Georgia for staying on top of this issue and keeping us informed!
• We sent a letter to the EPA protesting the limitations put on scientists, preventing them from speaking directly with the media:
• Alex Veeneman was named our first community coordinator to help me manage the workload. Thank you, Alex, for stepping up! Alex is the current leader of SPJ Digital, so he knows first hand the work involved in setting up a community and keeping it going.
• The Ethics and International Committees are working together to get the Code of Ethics translated into other languages.
• I had a call with national board members Patti Newberry, Sue Kopen Katcef, Brett Hall and Jordan Gass Poore last week to discuss student internships and the formation of a student-based community. Brett and Jordan agreed to lead the community and Patti & Sue agreed to serve as advisors. I need to get some input from our legal counsel since some of the internship issues we are discussing involve labor laws.
• I have selected SPJ’s EIJ15 programming committee volunteer – Athima Chansanchai (“Tima”) from the W. Washington Pro chapter. Tima was a diversity fellow this year and has helped with programming for the AAJA national convention several years ago. She will oversee the programming subcommittee that includes Paul Fletcher, Lynn Walsh and Patti Newberry.
• Amy Tardif of RTDNA scheduled a pre-planning EIJ15 programming conference call for early January to discuss EIJ14 successes, areas for improvement and goals for EIJ15. Scott Leadingham, director of education, is scheduling his first EIJ15 planning call before the holidays.
• We updated our statement speaking against Ohio legislation HB663, the secret executions bill, which went before the Ohio Senate Tuesday and today. Past president Kevin Smith attended on SPJ’s behalf.
• SPJ Freelance Chair Michael Fitzgerald and I spoke regarding the Freelance Community to discuss the election process.
• SPJ hosted a Digital Tools webinar taught by Kim Bui.
• SPJ has made an agreement to provide services to another journalism organization and has put a call out to hire a part-time communications person to help with that work.
• SDX did a big fundraising push this week, including a mailing and an email campaign. SPJ members are encouraged to set up monthly donations or make a one-time donation to help fund SDX’s efforts. Donate here.
• New member benefits are forthcoming. Linda Hall has been working hard to develop new relationships and acquire new benefits for our members. SPJ HQ will announce those new benefits soon, so stay tuned!
• We are trying to finalize all of the spring conferences. Some dates and locations are still tentative. The info. that is known can be found here.
• Joe hired a replacement for the part-time membership retention coordinator. We are eager to welcome him aboard!
• Tara Puckey was promoted to membership strategist to help further SPJ’s long-term mission and to address our changing membership needs. Linda Hall will continue to provide our members with the great service she always has. Congrats to Tara for this well-deserved promotion!
• FOIA chair Dave Cuillier issued a statement urging the U.S. Senate to pass the FOIA Improvement Act. SPJ tweeted this tonight. Senator Jay Rockefeller has put a hold on the bill.
• Butler Cain, J Ed committee chair, held a meeting with his committee yesterday to discuss providing resources, guidance and a list of experts to help support high school journalists and educators.
• Robyn Sekula, membership chair, is accepting nominations for the December Volunteer of the Month (deadline is tomorrow) and finalizing the committee’s strategic plan for the year.
• Carlos Restrepo and the International Journalism Community are also finalizing their goals for the year and selecting their assignments and projects. We have an enthusiastic bunch here – I am excited to see them move forward!
• Sarah Bauer, contest advisory group coordinator and co-chair of the Awards & Honors committee, is in the process of matching up SPJ contest swap partners across the country. This is a thankless task, but an important one. Thanks to Sarah for taking the lead!

Thanks to everyone within SPJ and SDX – staff, leaders and volunteers – who have contributed in some way to our success and mission. It truly takes a village, and we’ve got some big goals to tackle this year. I appreciate your enthusiasm and support.

As always, if I left something out, it was unintentional. My head is spinning with all of the activity, but if I omitted something, let me know, and I’ll update this post.

Til next time,

Dana Neuts
SPJ President

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

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.