Good evening, 919 Gang. Last night
Frank Klimko asked for suggestions on how to jump start a faltering SPJ chapter.
Our members were quick to offer help.
MATT HALL writes:
Hi
Frank. I have SPJ program ideas for you! I’m the president-elect of the
national Society of Professional Journalists and past president of the San Diego
chapter of SPJ (which won national chapter of the year under me in 2015 and
again when I was a board member in 2018). What I’ve learned is that listening
to your members and offering them what they want are both crucial to a
successful chapter.
I’d
do two things to start: survey your chapter membership and ask them what it
would like to see, then go someplace new/different with your board members, for
a retreat. Visit a newsroom you never have, or a quiet restaurant, or a less
quiet bar, and talk among yourselves for a couple hours over food or drinks.
Ask what your group’s passions and priorities are? Is it advocacy? Is it media
literacy? Do you want to get into classrooms and ground the next generation of
journalism consumers and journalists in best practices? Do you want to put on
panel discussions? Have parties? All of the above can be great for SPJ and a
local community. So ask...
Do
you want to throw regular mixers to rebuild your local journalism community? Do
you want to do a bunch of advocacy and issue statements that defend a free
press and demand open government? Do you want to hold some panel discussions
that could help journalists just do their day jobs better?
You
could do everything from share social media tips for our changing environment
to headline writing tips to FOIA request writing strategies to interview
techniques. You could have big-picture panels that help journalists with mental
health and self-care, or bring in veteran journalists to explain how they got a
particular story, or discuss how to cover a particular community better, or how
to report on suicide, or how to encrypt your Gmail account. You could invite
the subjects of high-profile news stories to be on a panel to grade the media.
You could award local PIOs and government agencies an annual Wall and Window
award for being least and most open to the public. National SPJ also has
structured session leaders we can bring to you on how to get the most out of
Google and Facebook.
In
your state, Paul Fletcher is a past national president and current head of our FOI
Committee. You could pick his brain. You can also always pick mine. I’m at smallhalls@gmail.com
and I live and breathe journalism and SPJ. Now more than ever, both are vital.
Happy to continue this conversation over email or by phone. Really appreciative
that you are an SPJ member. And I encourage anyone in this group who isn’t to
join: https://www.spj.org/join.asp
The San Diego chapter is one of the strongest in the country. And your annual
dues will go toward helping journalists around the nation with legal defense,
advocacy and media literacy, not to mention ethics. We’re here for you. If
anyone has any questions, drop me a note. Thanks!
MIRIAM
RAFTERY
writes:
Frank Klimko asked for ideas to keep
the SPJ chapter in Virginia alive. It’s important to reach out to young people
including journalism students and recent graduates. As with all organizations,
relying only on older members is a recipe for eventual dissolution. How about
having a brainstorming session with journalism students and teachers at local
universities or colleges to find out what their needs are?
Also smaller newspapers, online news
sites and nonprofit new sites are hungry for help to attract interns and new
writers. So setting up opportunities for editors to meet would-be interns and
reporters could be helpful.
In general a mix of events that offer practical
advice for journalists, speakers on hot topics, and social occasions (mixers,
etc.) if you are not already doing these things could be helpful.
Pro bono legal advice would be wonderful if you
could do that. I have been looking hard for such a service for our own publication,
and it is very difficult to find unless you’ve had a reporter’s life threatened
(as happened to one of our reporters recently). For more mundane matters, such
as how to interpret a new law with many complex changes to employer/employee
relationships here in California, there doesn’t seem to be a free place for
legal advice that I can find.
WALT BARANGER writes:
Replying to Frank Klimko:
Journalism students in college and
high school need the mentoring that mid-career journalists can offer.
SPJ chapters in colleges, especially, are
constantly looking for speakers and mentors.
If you need to draw members to meetings, a
regular media law presentation could be useful. Take 30 or 45 minutes each
month to discuss a media law topic, and perhaps invite a media lawyer to speak.
Heaven knows Virginia has no shortage of media lawyers.
LISA
PETRILLO
writes:
Klimko: for your SPJ revival: how about FOIA
guidance, templates, resources, etc? Since laws can vary by state, the local
need is greater.
Also offer nuts and bolts nights like
San Diego Press Club. Bring in speakers and leaders on subjects and charge two-tier,
$10 for members, $20 for nonmembers or some such?
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MIRIAM
RAFTERY
writes:
In addition to Mark Monday’s
suggestions on what to do when you’ve reached your limit of free article reads,
for many sites you can also continue to access content if you click open an
“incognito” tab. To do this in Firefox, I click on the horizontal lines at the
top right and choose the “new private window” option. In Chrome, click the
little buttons top right and choose the “new incognito window” option.
Of course if everyone did this on
every site, newspapers would struggle even more, since they do rely on
subscriptions. I personally still subscribe to the U-T as well as to the
Washington Post, New York Times and Sacramento Bee, those that I read most
often, to support their reporting on local, national, and California issues.
For the rest, I use multiple browsers, incognito windows and on occasion, even
a spare computer to make sure I can read the top stories that as a news editor
I need to see to stay informed.
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DAVID
FARMER writes:
Here's
a coincidence: In the week that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was
getting a lot of face time on American TV, Netflix was streaming the Ukrainian
TV comedy series that launched him into the presidency.
The
show, which first aired in 2015, is called "Servant of the People."
The dialogue is in Ukrainian, with English subtitles. It tells the story of a
high school teacher who one day is ranting in his classroom about the ills of
Ukraine. A student secretly records his obscenity-filled diatribe and posts it
online. Next thing you know, the teacher is elected president of his country in
a stunning upset.
It's
a fable, of course, but Ukrainians turned it into reality because of their
dissatisfaction with their actual leaders. They figured that a comedian might
make a better president than one of their old-line politicians. I've seen only
one episode, but it's fun and shows Vlad to be a likeable guy. Here he is:
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REBER: Lot of
talk tonight about journalists and lawyers. Tonight we wish Happy Birthday,
Sept. 29, to Logan McKechnie, a fellow who had demonstrated excellence in both
fields.
P.O.
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