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Committees
Finance, Tax and Budget Committee

The finance committee is chaired by the Society's secretary-treasurer. By authority of that position, the committee reviews the annual budget and sets financial goals. Its recommendations on the budget are forwarded to the SPJ board at its spring meeting.

Finance, Tax and Budget Committee Chair

Dana Neuts
Freelance Journalist
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Bio (click to expand) After a career in financial services, Dana (Blozis) Neuts began freelancing in 2003. Based in Kent, Washington, Dana is a freelance writer and editor as well as the owner and publisher of iLoveKent.net and iLoveCovington.com, hyperlocal blogs. Her work has appeared in many Seattle-area publications as well as national publications including GSN: Government Security News, HS Today and American Profile. She is past-president of the award-winning Western Washington Pro Chapter of SPJ, serves as the Region 10 Director of SPJ, is a member of the membership committee, and chairman of the freelance committee. She previously served on the SDX foundation board and has been a facilitator for Scripps. For more information, please visit VirtuallyYourz.com. Specialties: Business Writing and Editing, Features, Humor, Small Business, Nonprofits, Finance, Insurance, Travel, and Marketing Consulting and Implementation including Social Media.

Finance, Tax and Budget Committee Members

Sonny Albarado
Projects Editor
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
121 E. Capitol Ave.
Little Rock, AR 72201 501/244-4321
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Bio (click to expand) Born on the bayou and raised on a sugarcane plantation, Lawrence ‘Sonny’ Albarado is news editor of The Commercial Appeal, the largest daily newspaper in Memphis, Tenn.

Sonny, 55, moved to Memphis from Baton Rouge, La., in 1989 to become The CA’s deputy business editor. He had been the financial editor of the Morning Advocate, the daily in Louisiana’s capital city.

He joined SDX in 1979, when he was a reporter at the Advocate. He joined because he believed in the need for an organization that defends First Amendment principles and represents the common interests of journalists. That's why he still belongs.

Albarado has remained active in SPJ because, to use a cliché, "somebody has to do it."

“Somebody has to bird-dog the forces in local, state and national government who see citizens only as sources of votes or taxes. Somebody has to work to convince journalists, regardless of the medium they work in, that they have a common heritage, that despite competitive pressures, they are part of the same family. And somebody has to remember to party because journalists take themselves way too seriously,” he says.

At The Commercial Appeal, Albarado was a newsroom leader in developing investigative and computer-assisted reporting during the 1990s. From 1992 until his appointment as business editor in December 2002, he served as the Appeal’s projects editor. He supervised a team of five reporters who focused on investigative and explanatory journalism.

Among the team’s key accomplishments: Stories that brought about reforms in the property tax appraisal system and exposed corruption in a state program that paid private day-care operators to care for children of mothers on welfare. The day-care project led to federal prison sentences for program officials and a Tennessee Supreme Court ruling that applied the state’s open records law to private entities that receive government funding to carry out governmental functions.

Albarado and investigative team member also helped create one of the first electronic databases of campaign contributions to local and state candidates in the early 1990’s and conducted local and statewide polling on political and social issues.

As business editor, Albarado supervised a staff of six reporters and one deputy business editor. His main achievement as business editor was to increase the amount of local business news and reduce the amount of business wire copy provided by The Commercial Appeal.

As news editor, he has worked with other editors to create a new model for using wire services.

The effort has included new non-narrative story forms.

Albarado has a bachelor’s degree in English from Nicholls State University in his hometown of Thibodaux, La. He has taken graduate courses at Mississippi State University and Louisiana State University. He currently teaches computer-assisted reporting at the University of Memphis as an adjunct instructor.

In addition to membership in SPJ, he is a longtime member of Investigative Reporters & Editors.

He is married to Linda Lanier of Amite, La., who is a page designer at The Commercial Appeal. He has two adult sons from a previous marriage and two grandchildren.

David Cuillier
Work: 520/626-9694
Fax: 520/621-7557
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Bio (click to expand) David Cuillier, Ph.D., is director and associate professor at the University of Arizona School of Journalism, where he teaches computer-assisted reporting, public affairs reporting and access to public records. He was a government reporter and editor at daily newspapers for a dozen years in the Pacific Northwest, was the Society of Professional Journalists Freedom of Information Committee chairman for four years, and has been an SPJ newsroom trainer since 2005. He and Charles Davis co-authored The Art of Access: Strategies for Acquiring Public Records” and the blog www.theartofaccess.com.

Brian Eckert
University of Richmond
Director of Media and Public Relations
28 Westhampton Way
Richmond, VA 23173
(804) 287-6659
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Bill McCloskey
At-Large Director, National Board
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Bio (click to expand) Bill McCloskey, currently at large director of the Society of Professional Journalists is also a member of the Executive Committee, Bylaws Committee and the Finance Committee. He is the retired Washington, D.C.-based Director of Media Relations for AT&T, formerly BellSouth Corp.

In 2008 he was awarded the Wells Key, SPJ's highest honor for a volunteer.

Before joining BellSouth in 1987, Bill worked for 11 years with The Associated Press in Washington.

Bill's professional career started in 1961, when, as a high school junior, he took a summer newsroom job at Metromedia's WIP Radio in Philadelphia. He remained with Metromedia in Philadelphia until he was drafted into the Army upon graduation from Villanova University in 1966.

Ironically, the Army assigned him to the information office of the 1st Signal Brigade in Vietnam where he wrote press releases about the Army's telephone system.

Following his tour of duty, he was assigned by Metromedia to set up a news department for WASH FM in Washington. From 1968 until 1975, he worked as news director, network correspondent and TV news producer and writer for Metromedia in Washington.

He is past president of the D.C. Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and was the Society’s Region 2 director. He has been recognized three times with SPJ’s “President’s Award” for distinguished service to the Society.