Helping laid-off journalists

During the last few months, the SPJ membership committee and the national staff have talked about ways to possibly help laid-off journalists continue paying their SPJ membership dues. We are concerned about losing these unemployed reporters as members, perhaps permanently.

Some ideas that have been discussed include having local chapters contribute to a fund that could be used to temporarily pay dues for laid-off members, possibly for six months; reducing the membership fee for journalists who have lost their jobs, perhaps to $36; or waiving the fee altogether and giving the unemployed reporters an electronic membership.

None of these ideas, though, seem to be a clear favorite. So I'm asking for your help. Please let me know what suggestions you have. What can SPJ do to help retain members who have lost their jobs and, due to financial hardships, are unable to continue paying their dues? Do you like any of the above ideas? And would your chapter contribute to a fund for laid-off journalists?

You can respond either by adding a comment to this post or by sending me an e-mail at john.huotari@oakridger.com.

Thank you.

John Huotari
SPJ Membership Committee Chair

*************************************

Membership on Friday, March 13, 2009-- 8,645
Membership one year ago -- 9,212

Trial memberships, membership specials

I recently fielded a question about whether SPJ offers trial memberships. The answer to that question is, no, SPJ does not offer trial memberships.

However, there are options available to those who might be interested in joining SPJ but want to first learn more about the organization. One option is to use the SPJ Web site, which is loaded with information about the organization and its activities.

A second option is to find out whether there is an SPJ chapter in your area and, if there is, get in touch with someone in that chapter and plan to attend the next event. To help you find the chapter closest to you, visit SPJ's Local Connection page.

Another option is to try some of the training sessions provided by SPJ and its chapters. Information about those opportunities is available at the Training page on the SPJ Web site.

Potential members should also be aware that SPJ offers membership specials, including a deal for college graduates, who pay $72 for a three-year membership after college. That will save post-graduates some money, considering the normal professional membership is $72 per year.

Meanwhile, students can buy a four-year membership for $100. There are other specials available, including for retired, lifetime and household members. To see the membership categories and their fees, visit the Membership Fees page.

Joining SPJ from overseas

I got a telephone call last month from someone in Belgium who is interested in joining SPJ. However, this person was having trouble filling out the membership form online because the system wouldn't accept his entries in some fields, like those used for state, zip code and telephone number.

I asked Joe Skeel, SPJ associate executive director, what he would recommend. Joe said people living overseas who are interested in joining SPJ should download the registration form from the Web site at www.spj.org, print it out and fill it out, and then mail it in.

Alternatively, they can register by calling SPJ headquarters in the United States at (317) 927-8000. I assume the international access code and country code would have to be added to the beginning of that telephone number.

I'm sure most of you have seen SPJ's Web page on joining the organization, but, just in case you haven't, it's available at http://www.spj.org/join.asp.

Watering the Garden Center

SPJ's Garden Center blog has been dormant since September. Now, I want to revive it. I apologize for not keeping it active these last few months.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is John Huotari, and I am chairman of SPJ's membership committee. I am also a newspaper reporter, mostly covering city government for The Oak Ridger in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The good news for SPJ is that membership is mostly holding steady, despite the discouraging state of our industry and the national economy. Here's what the national staff said in their final membership report of 2008: "Given the circumstances that journalists and media companies faced this year, we think SPJ did very well regarding membership."

The challenge for us this year is retaining those members. During the last few months, I've noticed that the numbers of student and retired members in particular seem to be falling from where they were a year ago. Your SPJ membership committee (more information about them in subsequent posts) is working to find ways to reduce or eliminate those losses.

We also want to work closely with SPJ's freelance committee to ensure that SPJ remains valuable to freelancers, particularly as their ranks are expected to grow.

And we are forming a subcommittee to start a multi-year effort to form chapters in states that don't currently have them.

As the membership committee gets this blog active again, watch for updates on membership numbers, stories on successful recruitment and retention efforts from chapters across the country, and tips from SPJ pros.

Please feel free to send me any questions or suggestions you might have. The SPJ membership committee is meant to be a resource for members and local chapters, as well as those interested in becoming members or forming chapters. I will do my best to get back to you as soon as possible.

You may contact me by e-mail at john.huotari@oakridger.com or by phone at (865) 220-5533.

May the rain gods bless this blog :), and may you visit often.

How St. Louis Grew

Gardener's note: The St. Louis Pro Chapter was one of three chapters honored at the SPJ National Convention for posting the greatest gains in membership. St. Louis won on the strength of a jump from 31 in June 2007 to 80 by May 2008.

Shera Dalin, a member of the SPJ membership committee, provided this story on how St. Louis achieved its rapid increase:

 

Word of the St. Louis Pro chapter’s whopping 158 percent membership growth over the past year took a few of us by surprise. Certainly we had noticed new faces and had seen some stellar turnout to our events, but we had no idea that we were tops in the nation in chapter growth and No. 2 in net gain of new members.

So how’d we do it? We had to think about that for a bit, but here’s what we attribute it to. The following comments are from Chapter President Rachel Melcer.

·         The chapter had been dormant, so we had nowhere to go but up. Once we reactivated it, people seemed to welcome SPJ—pent-up demand, if you will.

·         We’ve been very aggressive about programming, offering a monthly luncheon panel discussion and a purely social happy hour every month. The quality of our speakers has attracted good turnout, especially the launch of a competing Web-based St. Louis news site—STLBeacon.com. (We packed the lunch discussion when we had the founders come to speak.) We tried to balance our panels between practical journalism and issue-based topics.

·         St. Louis also has a lot of retired journalists, and they were looking for programs like these as a way of staying involved. We’ll be marketing to more of them this year as, sadly, their numbers are growing.

·         We’ve also held a couple of much more high-profile events that were very successful: a spring regional conference in 2007, and a journalism-themed trivia night last fall. Trivia nights are a St. Louis specialty – nearly every church, private school and charity seems to have one. But ours was the first that was tailored to journalists. Selling beer didn’t hurt either.

·         Our board has very consciously worked to diversify itself. As members have stepped down, or new positions have been created, we recruit new board members from media that haven’t been represented. Our board includes journalists from radio, the Web, academia, the freelance world and print publications ranging from the big daily to a small, free-distribution weekly. We are each able to reach out to a different pool of potential members and program participants.

·         We’ve had great membership chairs – first former Post-Dispatch science writer Tina Saey, and freelance journalist Shera Dalin. These days, we benefit from Shera’s broad network of journalists from all over our region. Recently, she and two other board members visited a newsroom where we had been unknown, pitching SPJ to their reporters and editors. As a result, several people have begun attending our programs and we hope to convert them to members.

·         We reach out individually to prospective members and invite them to join in a low-key way. No hard sale tactics required.

·         And we hope to do even more in the future. We’re planning another spring regional conference for 2009, and we’d like to include a journalism contest as part of that program. Another trivia night already is in the works. So, we plan to build on our success going forward to make the St. Louis Pro Chapter even bigger and more vibrant.

 

 

SPJ Green Thumb Awards

And the winners are...

Later this week at the SPJ national convention in Atlanta, three outstanding pro and student chapters will be honored with the first-ever Green Thumb awards for being the fastest growing chapters in the country.

 

The SPJ membership committee decided last fall to present these awards to the chapters that posted the largest membership gains either by number or percentage based upon the May 1, 2008 census.

 

And the winners are: Maryland Pro, St. Louis Pro and the University of Drake student chapter in Des Moines, Iowa.

 

Maryland posted the greatest numeric gain by posting a net increase of 59 new members, quite a jump for a chapter that started the year with 55 members.

 

St. Louis grew from 31 members last year to 80, for a percentage gain of 158 percent.

 

If corn grew as fast as the Drake SPJ chapter, we would have beat world hunger. The chapter went from just two faithful members to 55 in one year.

 

How did they do it? If we could bottle their methods, I’d send every chapter a case.

 

For the story of how Drake revived its chapter, see Kate Fazzini’s story in the July 27 post on the Garden Center blog.

 

Watch this space also for stories from members of the St. Louis and Maryland chapters within the next few weeks.

 

The outstanding growth enjoyed by these three chapters is part of larger trend that saw SPJ’s national membership rolls grow by about 6.5 percent over the last year.

 

Our current membership stands at 9,650, an increase of 589 members. That's the highest level we’ve reached in at least two years.

 

Those gains come after several years of flat or no growth. What makes this trend all the more remarkable is that we posted these gains at a time when economic turmoil in the newspaper business has led to the loss of more than 6,000 jobs.

 

How did we do it? Analysis shows the two fastest growing sectors of SPJ has been among the professional and post-graduate members.

 

At last year’s convention in Washington D.C., members approved a deal that extended the post-graduate rate of $36 per year for three years after a college journalist graduated.

 

We also sweetened that deal by offered a three-year membership for the price of two years.

 

The results were clear: we had a net gain of 208 new post-graduates, an increase of 24 percent.

 

Growth among the professional chapters was steady and pervasive nationwide. Of the 64 chapters for which data was available, 55 chapters posted membership gains, for a net increase of 367 pro members.

 

Our challenge for the year ahead will be retaining these members and continue to grow. But with innovative and energetic chapters like Drake, St. Louis and Maryland, I’m confident we’ll find a way.

 

Postscript…

 

This week marks my last post for the Garden Center. After a year as membership chair, I’m stepping down to run for Region 9 director.

 

The very able John Huotari, a committee member from Tennessee, will take over as chair this month. Please give John the help that I enjoyed this past year.

 

It’s been a fun year. I wish to thank the membership committee for all their ideas and suggestions. And a special thanks to vice chair Ellen Mrja for keeping both the faith and the minutes.

 

I’d also like to thank our “gardeners” Kate Fazzini, Melvin “Buddy” Baker and Rekha Raman, who helped report and write stories for the Garden Center. Special thanks to Kate for also keeping members of the SPJ membership network informed.

 

And last but not least, thanks to SPJ staffers Linda Hall and Joe Skeel, who were invaluable when it came to helping put our ideas into practice.

 

SPJ by the numbers

 

Membership this week            9,650

Membership last month          9,570

Membership one year ago       9,061

 

 

 

From 2 to 65, the Drake SPJ Story

Reviving a student chapter in Des Moines

 

By Kate Fazzini

 

Lindsey Purificato, a senior journalism student at Des Moines-based Drake University, helped breath life into a student chapter that was struggling for several years.

 

The chapter, which had essentially "died out," got her attention when she set out to find a journalism fraternity at Drake. Purificato had noticed that her friends majoring in business and pre-law had their own fraternities; she asked around about the chapter, and learned from faculty advisors that it had been the victim of a years-long lack of interest. She was told she would need to get 10 people interested in the program to form a chapter from scratch – soon enough, she had a list of 25 "solid people" who were ready to join.

 

By the time the group had their first official meeting in March 2007, 50 to 60 people showed up. At last count, the chapter had around 65 members.

 

"We split up (the recruiting work) between the board members. Everyone was really excited, they wanted to know 'how does it work,' 'what can we do,'" she said.

 

One of the main drivers of the chapter's success has been in pricing, she said. The SPJ chapter has positioned itself as, simply, less expensive than the other campus professional fraternities, which has helped in convincing cash-strapped journalism students to join.

 

"'Dues' is a big question for college students. National dues are $36, and chapter dues are $14. That made it an easy $50 for everybody," she said.

 

The group helped arrange a number of mixers and learning sessions. The latter were aided by Iowa's primary caucuses held last year. Student attendance at a "steak fry" with John Edwards, a speech by Barack Obama and other events were facilitated with help from faculty members. Advisor Janet Keefer helped guide the reformation of the chapter, in part by helping keep chapter members informed of these events.

 

"They're definitely very helpful. They let me know, so I can let the members know (about big events in the Des Moines area)," Purificato said. "Then we can write them up for the school paper."

 

The fledgling group has executed several events of its own, included a mini "convention" featuring local professionals from newspapers, magazines, broadcasting, public relations and advertising, who gave presentations for the journalism majors. Students brought resumes for review by the professionals. The group also organized cross-campus events.

 

"With the professional pre-law fraternity, we have done bonding things – ice skating, bowling, social get-togethers," she said.

 

One  immediate goal for the chapter, she added, is to make better connections with local professionals – particularly on the magazine side – as well as at local SPJ Pro chapters. Purificato will be a senior, with a double major in Internet and Broadcast news. Her main hope is that the chapter will continue going strong after her graduation.

 

SPJ by the numbers

 

Membership this week                  9,524

Membership one month ago         9,559        

Membership one year ago            8,856

Spring Training/Fall Classic, an operators manual

Here is a recipe for attracting new members. It’s a formula that worked well for Colorado SPJ, enabling our chapter to grow by 30 in one year.

 

Results may vary. Feel free to modify these instructions to best fit local conditions. Just let us know what worked for you.

 

 

Step One: Assemble the cast

 

To produce a successful training seminar, at minimum, you will need the following five people:

 

A chair: someone who oversees the operation, delegates work, holds people to schedules, makes adjustments when needed.

 

A campus insider: someone currently working at a college campus with routine and regular interaction with students, someone whom they trust and respect.

 

A booker: someone who is responsible for assembling the speakers.

 

A publicist: someone who is charge of marketing the event, who will do outreach and build an audience.

 

A designer: Someone who will create a graphic that can be used interchangeably as a flyer, e-mail, poster or postcard.

 

Four speakers: each with a different area of expertise that would be relevant to an audience of young journalists or journalism students. Someone who would be willing to donate about 90 minutes of their time for free.

 

Step Two: Doing the logistics

 

Find a venue: a room capable of holding up to 50 people, preferably with a projector screen and Internet access. Ideally on a college campus, it can also be in a newsroom, a library or a community center. Also needs to be free.

 

Time: Do not attempt one of these sessions without at least six months advance notice. You will need half that time to plan the program and the other half to publicize it.

 

Pricing: Set your price low enough to just break even. The fee should be equivalent to the dues that your chapter charges its members.

 

For example: in Colorado, we charge the national rate of $72 for professionals and $36 for students plus local chapter dues of $17.

 

We applied the $17 toward lunch and other expenses and forward the rest to SPJ national in the form of a dues payment. Try to hold food costs to about $15 per person.

 

In some cases, where we had student members who were not part of the state chapter, we simply forwarded $17 to SPJ national and upgraded their membership to pro chapter status.

 

Thus we were able to charge the following rate structure for the half-day seminar: $89 for non-member professional; $56 non-member students and $30 for current SPJ members (students or professionals).

 

If possible, try to collect fees in advance of the event. Here’s where a campus adviser/insider can help by serving as both RSVP and money collector.

 

Location: Go to where the students are. It’s easier to ask four speakers to drive to your location than to have your audience commute to your event.

 

Step Three: the initial organization meeting

 

Take an hour to have the principal organizers outlined above meet face-to-face to decide the following: venue, date, price, theme and date for a follow-up meeting.

 

It helps to have a catchy title such as the baseball motif we used Spring Training or Fall Classic. Also use related titles for each of the individual sessions. We had sessions such as “Put me in coach” for a talk on the editor/reporter relationship and “Slick Defense” for a session on copy editing.

 

Discuss possible speakers, but leave it to the booker to sort out the details and the lineup. Don’t get too hung up on the theme and the speakers. Remember to devote an equal amount of time to publicizing the event as you devote to programming it.

 

Have a designer begin to rough out a graphic immediately after this meeting.

 

Step four: the follow up meeting. This can take place via conference call. During this time, finalize the speakers and the order in which they appear. Also sign off on the graphic. It should be colorful and not too text-heavy. Include contact info for the RSVP person.

 

Step Four: the publicity campaign.

 

The publicist should enlist other journalism groups that can share the flyer with their members.

 

It also helps to find one person in each nearby newsroom who will agree to act as a contact person and ensure that the flyers actually get into the hands of their co-workers

 

Attend local press association conventions, journalism forums, mixers and make newsroom visits where possible to promote the event.

 

It also helps to hold a mixer at a local bar about a week prior to the seminar and invite students and young journalists to attend.

 

Third and final meeting: Check list of final details. Make sure audio/visual and Internet access works. Make sure there’s coffee and donuts at the beginning of the session as well as bottled water and snacks for the afternoon.

 

The booker should make a round of calls about a week before the event to reminds speakers when and where to show up.

 

Miscellaneous notes:

 

Scheduling: We found that Saturday morning from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. works best. Beyond 3 p.m. even the most brilliant speakers will have a tough time holding the audience.

 

Sessions: Instruct your speakers that they have to fill one hour. A half-hour presentation followed by 30 minutes of question and answer session generally works well.

 

Encourage your speakers to bring handouts. Leave a break period of 15 minutes after each session for speaker and audience to interact one-to-one.

 

It also helps to have someone who can talk over the lunch hour. Have fun with your speaker topics. Don’t be boring.

 

Backup: Have one person (usually the moderator) who is prepared to step in and make a presentation on short notice in the event one of your scheduled speakers fails to show.

 

Finale: End each seminar with the SPJ initiation seminar. (See Garden Center Post “Ritual as Compost” from Dec. 30) You will need some candles and about 2-3 chapter members to conduct the initiation.

 

About a week after the seminar, the organizers should do one last conference call to critique what worked and what didn’t.

 

The chair should prepare a report for the SPJ national membership coordinator, detailing who joined, supplying their contact info as well as a breakdown of the money that will be sent to purchase new memberships or upgrade existing one.

 

About one month after the seminar, the chapter president should send an e-mail welcoming the new members to the chapter and out-lining other upcoming events.

 

Good luck and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me at damon_runyon@hotmail.com.

 

SPJ by the Numbers

 

Membership this week           9,480

Membership last month         9,391

Membership one year ago     8,813

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Know Your Audience

The Gardener has taken some time off to deal with a real gardening problem: the enormous weeds that threatened to turn his front yard into a jungle.

 

Last weekend, however, I was fortunate to serve as one of the facilitators at SPJ’s annual Scripps Leadership Institute in Indianapolis.

 

There I had the chance to talk with 50 up and coming student and pro leaders about what it will take to grow their chapters.

 

We talked about a great many things: dues, programs, strategies and best practices. We talked about how retaining members is just as important as recruiting them.

 

Central to our conversations was an idea that has become increasing important to my thinking over the last two years on the subject of membership development: the importance of knowing your audience.

 

In my view, there is a spectrum of journalists whom we can and should try to convince to join SPJ.

 

At one end of this scale at what I call the “altruistic” journalists, those for whom the core values of what SPJ stands for are central to their reasons for joining.

 

On the other end of the spectrum are the “pragmatic” journalists, those who believe in their profession but who always require a tangible answer to the question “what do I get for my money?”

 

In small group sessions in Indianapolis, I asked each of the pro chapter participants to explain why they belonged to SPJ. Their answers were heartening. They cited:

 

-SPJ’s setting the standard for ethics.

-Our work on behalf of a federal shield law.

-Our support of diversity in the newsroom.

-Our commitment to journalism training.

-The networking that SPJ provides.

 

It’s not surprising that the future leaders of SPJ would be among the folks who you would find on the altruistic end of the scale.

 

However, I pointed out to them that in recruiting new members, often they will be talking to prospects on the other end of the scale. Inevitably, one of them will ask, “well what do I get for my $72?” It’s best to have a ready answer.

 

One such answer is training. Having the right new media skills is becoming increasingly important to finding a job in U.S. newsrooms.

 

A journalist who knows how shoot video, do audio slide shows, report and write online stories and maybe even blog is someone who is increasingly in demand.

 

And yet, it’s my distinct impression that many newsrooms lack the time or the budgets to provide such training.

 

That’s where I believe SPJ can provide a valuable role that can help us bring in new members in bunches.

 

By hosting such training sessions for fees equal to one-year’s dues, I believe we can provide an answer that will resonate with even the most pragmatic of journalists: join us and we’ll help you improve the skills to need to advance in a multi-media newsroom.

 

Some caveats: I’m not suggesting that we give up on recruiting members for whom the core values such as ethics, diversity and freedom of information are paramount. Those reasons should come first. And those members tend to join and stay for a long, long time.

 

But what I am suggesting is simply this: know your audience and adjust your membership pitch accordingly.

 

I’m aware that “pragmatic” journalists have a tendency to drop their membership one year later unless they are given a compelling reason to stay.

 

But that’s where the equally important strategies of member retention come into play.

 

Over the course of that year, if chapters provide a steady stream of reasons to be a member (i.e. programs, mixers, discounts, ect.) we’ll be able to hang onto a fair percentage of these pragmatic journalists before their memberships expire.

 

Who knows, we might even nudge them a bit closer toward the altruistic side of life.

 

Next week, I’ll outline a training protocol that has enabled Colorado SPJ to nearly double its membership in two years.

 

SPJ by the numbers

 

Membership this week                  9,407

Membership last month                9,326

Membership last year                    8,743

 

Why members leave SPJ, Part II

Catch the post-graduates. Focus on young and online journalists. Appeal to people who belong to more than one journalism organization. Convert journalist leaving the business into associate members. Track members who switch job.

 

These were just some of the ideas that came out of a May 9 meeting of the SPJ membership committee when we discussed a recent survey of why members opt to leave SPJ.

 

In March, the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University conducted the survey of 515 SPJ members who did not renew their membership.

 

The study found that most of the people surveyed cited a change in jobs or a departure from journalism as the most frequently cited reason for dropping out of SPJ.

 

The survey also found that two-thirds of those people left SPJ within 5 years of joining and 40 percent left within the first two years.

 

By and large, membership committee members said those results jibe with their experience. Both Ellen Mrja of Minnesota State University at Mankato and Sarah Bauer of Minnesota Pro said they’ve noticed that people who leave their chapters do so within 2-to-5 years.

 

Since many Minnesota State University students head to the Minneapolis area looking for jobs after they graduate, Mrja agreed to share a list of the next class of graduating SPJ members with Bauer to help the pro chapter recruit them.

 

Joe Skeel, who recently took over the job of coordinating SPJ recruitment and retention efforts, reminded the committee that SPJ does send letters to all graduating SPJ student members congratulating them and encouraging them to join their local pro chapter.

 

We discussed the possibility of systematically putting the names and contact information for these graduates into the hands of membership activists with the pro chapters.

 

Ellen also suggested we address the perception of “high dues”, which were cited by 21 percent of the survey respondents.

 

Several committee members said they were glad to see the survey’s finding that many of the departing members left with a high opinion of SPJ’s work in areas such as ethics, freedom of information and shield law advocacy.

 

Given the good marks that SPJ got, John Hopkins of Miami suggested that perhaps some of the members who are leaving the business could be persuaded to continue as associate members.

 

Hopkins also focused on another interesting fact. The survey found that more than 60 percent of the respondents reported that they belonged to at least two other journalism organizations besides SPJ.

 

Journalists are notorious for not joining organizations, but it would appear, based on these survey results, that SPJ members tend to belong to more than one outfit.

 

That fact lends some credibility to two membership-building proposals that the committee has recommended: trading ads with other journalism-related magazines and trading exhibit tables at the conventions of comparable journalism groups.

 

Joe advised that we be careful not to appear to “poach” members from other organizations. However, he agreed to explore the possibility of swapping booths at conventions.

 

John Ensslin noted that SPJ has been able to keep its membership levels relatively steady despite the exodus of some 2,400 journalists who have left the business within the last year.

 

Ensslin suggested that one implication of this finding is that SPJ should concentrate on recruiting more young journalists and people who are working for online news outlets.

 

In Denver, for example, of the 40 or so people who accepted buy-outs from the city’s two daily papers last year, only one was an SPJ member (albeit a former chapter president.)

 

Meanwhile, Colorado Pro has nearly doubled it membership rolls within the last two years. In part, that’s because the chapter’s growth has been in student, post-graduate and online journalists.

 

Some committee members who were unable to attend the meeting e-mailed their views of what the survey means for growing SPJ membership.

 

Bill Bleyer of New York suggested that we need to do a better job of tracking job changes and trying to match moving journalists with new chapters.

 

Bill also wrote, “There’s not much we can do about those worried about hard times except lowering dues, which isn’t likely.”

 

John Huotari of East Tennessee noted how the survey found departed members were more satisfied with SPJ nationally more than their local chapters. John offered the following suggestion:

 

“It looks to me like (former) members value networking and would value networking and would like more local chapter activity.”

 

“I guess my “take-away” is figuring out how to have more ethics programming and networking, probably particularly at the local level. Maybe this will help retain members and make the “high dues” less of a concern.

 

Several members also had some questions that the survey did not answer. They were puzzled by the fact that when asked what SPJ could have done to retain the former members, about 80 percent of them supplied no answer. Ensslin agreed to explore this question more with the survey's author.

 

SPJ by the numbers

 

Membership this week                  9,391

Membership one month ago         9,216

Membership one year ago            8,810

 

 

 

 

Why members leave SPJ

A recent survey provided some interesting insights into the reasons why members leave SPJ.

 

One third of the 515 randomly selected former members who took part in the poll said they chose not to renew because they have left journalism.

 

The survey was conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University in March 2008.

 

Here are some other interesting findings from the survey:

 

-         Half of the people who dropped out of SPJ worked for newspapers.

-         The people who left gave SPJ high marks for efforts on ethics and more than two-thirds said they were satisfied with SPJ.

-         About 21 percent said they felt the dues were too high.

-         Job change was the most frequently cited reason for not renewing.

 

The survey comes at a time when newspapers across the county have been shedding jobs.

 

In April, an American Society of Newspaper Editors survey reported a loss last year of 2,400 jobs on full-time professional staffs, a decrease of about 4.4 percent to a total of 52, 600. That’s the biggest drop in 30 years. See link at: http://www.asne.org/index.cfm?id=6936

 

Despite that trend, SPJ has been able to hold its own, with membership remaining fairly steady between 8,800 to 9,200 over the last year. In fact, there has been a slight but steady uptick in recent weeks, owing in part to a 21 percent increase of postgraduate memberships.

 

However, in order to do a better job of growing SPJ and retaining members, we commissioned this study to determine who is leaving and why.

 

Here are some of the findings:

 

About two-thirds of the members who did not renew were SPJ members for five years or less. Nearly 40 percent left after two years or less.

 

When asked to rate SPJ on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest, former members graded SPJ with a 4.55 for journalism ethics, 4.49 for freedom of information access issues, 3.99 for enacting a federal shield law and 3.97 for diversifying coverage and sources.

 

When asked to rate SPJ communications, the former members gave the Quill an average of 3.88 and gave the SPJ website an average of 3.54.

 

Just over 70 percent said they were either completely or somewhat satisfied with SPJ. Local chapters drew a slightly lower score with 61.5 percent of the respondents saying they were completely or somewhat satisfied with their local chapter.

 

When asked what might draw them back to SPJ, 4.5 percent suggested lower dues and 3.3 percent suggested more local activity. Significantly, 80.7 percent did not respond to this question.

 

The SPJ membership committee will be discussing these finding later this week. We’d also be glad to hear from you. If you have a comment or you would like a copy of the report, please e-mail me at damon_runyon@hotmail.com

 

 

SPJ by the numbers

 

Membership this week               9, 171

Membership one month ago     9,000

Membership one year ago         8,694

Brave New Members

Here in the Rocky Mountain West, SPJ recently hosted a spring regional conference that I believe could serve as a template for any region seeking to increase the size of its membership.

 

Dubbed “Brave New World”, our conference provided one day of training on the skills that journalists will need to work in a profession that is swiftly and inexorably moving online.

 

Thus we arranged a lineup of speakers who talked about how to do video and audio versions of a story and how writing breaking news for the web is different than the traditional model of writing a story for the print newspaper.

 

We were especially fortunate to book former New York Times reporter Sarah Boxer, who gave a brilliant funny and insightful keynote speech on the intersection between journalism and blogging. Sarah set the tone for what turned out to be a memorable day of conversation, questions and learning.

 

We made sure to include some discussion on fundamental topics such as the relationship between editors and reporters. We also held day-long sessions in which professionals critiqued the resumes and clips of young journalist.

 

We also were careful this year to spend as much if not more time publicizing our seminar as we did on booking our speakers.

 

The end result was this: more than 90 people came to Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Co. from as far away as Utah and Wyoming. It was a true regional gathering.

 

But here is the key to our event. We decided to raise membership rather than funds.

 

Thanks to our partnership with the CSU chapter of SPJ, we were able to have free use of the student center chambers for the day. Our only major expense was lunch, which cost us about $17 per person.

 

We pegged the price of the conference to a one-year membership. Students who joined SPJ that day paid $53 while non-member professionals paid $89. Members paid $30.

 

By applying our $17 in local dues toward the price of lunch, we essential were able to allocate the rest of the proceeds to purchasing memberships.

 

Thus we were able to end the day with a candlelight initiation ceremony when we welcomed 48 new members for the Utah, Wyoming and Colorado chapters.

 

Two years ago, our chapter staged a successful regional conference in Denver which generated about $1,000 in profits. We were happy for the financial windfall.

 

But given a choice, I’d much rather have a chapter rich in members than one flush with money.

 

Our challenge in the year ahead will be to make SPJ as relevant as possible to these new members and to work on retaining as many as possible. But in the meantime, our chapter is growing at a rate we’ve never before experienced.

 

It is my belief that what happened in Fort Collins that fine spring day is something that can be in any chapter in the country. By tapping into this genuine hunger for training we can initiate a whole new generation of SPJ members.

 

SPJ by the numbers

 

Membership this week            9,306

Membership one month ago   9,288

Membership one year ago       8,871

 

Garden Strategies, Part Two

The Gardener has been on spring break for a few weeks. I’ve been tending to some big events in Colorado, including SPJ Region 9's Spring Conference.

 

The conference, titled "Brave New World" drew more than 90 journalists to Fort Collins, Colo. from as far away as Wyoming and Utah. Because we pegged the price of the conference to an amount equal to one year’s dues, we were able to add 48 new members to SPJ in a single day.

 

Meanwhile, I was delighted to take in a bumper crop of new ideas for growing our membership. Keep those suggestions coming. They’ve been wonderful. Later this week, I will ask the SPJ membership committee to help me pick the best, most original idea and we’ll send out that $25 Starbucks gift card to the winner.

 

First, here are a few suggested by members of the membership committee:

 

SPJ Bistro

 

Offer practical and focused workshops, similar to those being offered by the NYC-based group Media Bistro, which does an excellent job convening journalists in several large urban areas. SPJ has the advantage of having members in areas of the country where Media Bistro traditionally has not reached. We should offer similar programs in these areas.

 

In Your Facebook

 

Take advantage of the trend toward online social networking and establish an SPJ Facebook site where members can exchange ideas and helpful information.

 

And here are just a few of the creative ideas suggested by SPJ members:

 

 

SPARTANS, PREPARE TO JOIN

 

Bringing to mind "The 300" movie, SPJ could use this motif for ads to
hammer home the point that we're the largest journalism organization in
the nation and we're shooting for a membership 10,000 strong. Suggest
strength and dedication, even against great odds.
 
Graphics could be photos of groups of journalists (and SPJ members) in
newsrooms all over the country. The larger the group the better. SPJ
could put out the word that we're looking for group shots of SPJ members
in newsrooms and broadcast studios and colleges all across the country
to feature in our ads.

 

I COVER THE WATERFRONT

 

Create ads that highlight major stories that a member has covered. For example, feature someone who has been in the middle of covering Hurricane Katrina or the polygamist ranch raid in Texas or a four-alarm fire in their hometown.
 
It could end with some catchy slogan like "Be proud to be a journalist. Join SPJ"

 

WHO’S YOUR MENTOR?

 

Identify journalism students about to graduate and set them up with a working journalist as a mentor. Using e-mail the mentor and grad could communicate about internships, getting that first job, feedback on stories or other questions. The graduates could be encouraged to come to SPJ events where they would already know someone — their mentor.

 

SPJ-TUBE.

 

These days everyone is turning to multi-media platforms, so why not put some videos together and create an SPJ profile on You Tube? 
 
A video could be placed on the SPJ site as well or on other sites. It could have testimonials from various members talking about why the joined SPJ/what they got out of it. Maybe you can even get each chapter to submit videos/pictures from their local SPJ events and you can put it together in a montage of sorts with the testimonials.
 
Or you could even hold a small contest for people to put together an inspirational video that gets the word out about SPJ. And see who does the best job.

 

A JAVA JOLT

 

The hardest thing for any organization to do is to actually get their members out to the regular meetings. They pay for it, but they still don’t go!

 

But as the SPJ Member Resources email said, we’ll do anything for coffee, right? So why not hold chapter meetings in places that donate good coffee at the meeting in exchange for an ad on the chapter’s homepage? If a cup of good coffee averages $3 these days, then monthly attendance would save $36 in coffee, and since dues are $72, that’s a 50% savings! Wow! Nice piece of math, eh?

 

AN SPJ DRIVE PERK

 

Why not offer free licence plate holders to members who renew within a certain timeframe or for new members who sign up for two years initially?

 

 

GO WHERE THE MEMBERS ARE

 

If new members won't come to the organization, take the organization to them. Many small towns and rural areas have no members because of the distance to the nearest active chapter. The nearest chapter could schedule a membership meeting in the target area, inviting local media members to attend. At the meeting they could describe the role of SPJ, including a slide show, and describe the kinds of activities they have been involved with. The meeting would close with an invitation for new members to enroll and an offer of further assistance to help get the new chapter on its feet.

 

SPJ CERTIFIED

 

Certify publications whose newsrooms achieve a high percentage of membership, say 70 percent or more, with an official designation such as SPJ CERTIFIED. This status could be awarded in the form of a plaque or certificate, as was as a listing on a special SPJ web page of hyperlinks for all CERTIFIED publications with a public notation of their membership percentage..

 

FREE MEMBERSHIPS

 

 

Several members suggested giving journalism post-graduates one year of free membership. The Gardener is less than keen on this idea for the following reason.

 

We currently have a very good deal on post-graduate members which enables them to get one year free if they pay for two years at the rate of $36-per-year.

 

This incentive seems to be working. Post-grads are among the fastest-growing sector of SPJ membership, with a total of 674, a nearly 22 percent gain over the previous year.

 

The Gardener wishes to thank all of you who took the time to e-mail me your thoughtful suggestions.

 

 

SPJ by the numbers

 

Membership this week            9,216

Membership one month ago   9,212

Membership one year ago       8, 801

 

 

 

 

 

 

Garden strategies

The SPJ Membership Committee is looking for a few good ideas.

 

The committee met recently to discuss some new strategies to recruit and retain members. We brainstormed on ideas that might work but haven't been tried before.

 

Below is a summary of what we've come up with so far.

 

Do you have an idea that might help us grow SPJ membership? Send it along to me at damon_runyon@hotmail.com.

 

The Gardener will award a $25 Starbucks card to the person who submits the best idea.

 

Meanwhile, here are a few ideas to get you started:

 

My SPJ…Let’s create a series of 12 print ads modeled on the old “Dewar’s Whiskey Profiles.” You may recall, these ads usually featured a portrait photo of a prominent person accompanied by a brief formatted set of biographical questions.

 

But instead of asking for their preferred whiskey, our ads would ask how long they’ve been SPJ members and a quote about why they belong.

 

Trade Ads…To extend the reach of our ad campaign, let’s approach some of the other popular journalism magazines such as Columbia Journalism Review and American Journalism review and offer to trade ad space in the Quill for the ability to place ads in their publications.

 

Got Ethics?...Our code of ethics is one of our strengths and something that helps define SPJ. It also contributes to our ability to attract and hold onto members.

 

What if we were to undertake an ad campaign where we traded ad space with other journalism organizations like Poynter and IRE? An online banner ad that read “Got Ethics” could link to a site at spj.org that would highlight our code and make a pitch for SPJ membership.

 

Membership Week…We shameless stole this idea from public radio stations and their periodic membership fundraising drives.

 

What if we were to designate one week out of the year, most likely in the fall, where recruiting new members would be a priority for both pro and students chapters. Perhaps we could also offer a slight discount for new members who sign up during this period.

               

Premiums…As an added incentive, what if we were to build a bank of items that could serve as gifts to the first say 100 new members who signed up during membership week. These premiums could include autographed books, SPJ gear, or other items that individual chapters could help generate.

 

Reward the Recruiter…Add a line to the membership application that asked “Recruited by.” This information would enable us to members who sign up new members during Membership Week. Incentives could be awarded on a sliding scale.

 

Thus someone who signs up one new member that week could be eligible for a coffee mug. Someone who signs up three new members might get an SPJ t-shirt. Someone who signs up a dozen members could be eligible for free registration to our annual conference.

 

Show the Flag…Let’s see if we can trade exhibit space at our convention this fall with that of other journalism conventions such as the Unity gathering in Chicago or the annual IRE convention. We can involve local chapters to help us staff those booths while showing the SPJ banner to prospective members in those other organizations.

 

Show the Flag, Part II…Encourage local chapters to make similar trades with local journalism groups such as press clubs and press associations. Swap tables at award banquets or exhibit space at conventions.

 

Scout High School Journalists…Committee members were not keen on actively recruiting high school journalists, however, we thought it would be wise for SPJ to secure a booth at the annual high school journalist conventions, such as the one scheduled for this November in St. Louis. Tap the local chapter for the volunteers to staff the booth.

 

A Hybrid Brochure…Have a graphic artist designed a desktop publishing document that would feature reasons for joining SPJ on several panels while leaving one panel blank for a local chapter to fill in with details specific to that chapter.

 

Track Graduates…Enlist the help of local student chapter advisors so that local pro chapter officers can know in advance who is about to graduate from their college journalism program. Actively retain these post-graduate members by staging a job resume/clip evaluation clinic around graduation.

 

 

SPJ by the numbers

 

Membership this week                9,212

Membership one month ago      9,119

Membership one year ago          9,046

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Old School Journalist