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2002-03 annual report
July 2, 2003
I. General chapter information
A. Reporting officer
This report for the Middle Tennessee Professional Chapter is filed by Jennifer Peebles. Currently I am the interim chapter president. I will take office as chapter president on July 1, having been elected on May 21, 2003.
B. Current chapter officers
A table of the chapter's current officers, including their addresses, phone numbers and dates of their terms, is attached to this report and is marked Table 1.
C. Convention and conference representation
Our chapter was represented at the 2002 national convention and at the 2003 Region 12 conference by Frank Gibson, our chapter treasurer and a former national president of SPJ.
D. Financial reports
A treasurer's report form is attached to this report, along with a copy of our latest chapter financial report.
E. Current bylaws
A copy of our chapter's current bylaws is attached to this report.
II. Chapter activities and programs
A. Professional development meetings
Our chapter has been extremely busy this year. We have held a total of seven professional development chapter meetings in 2002-03.
A few words on each of them:-
June 19, 2002: "FOI Tennessee Style"
This meeting, held at Nashville's 12th and Porter restaurant, featured our chapter treasurer, Frank Gibson, a leader in SPJ's Project Sunshine initiative, talking about and taking questions on the latest changes in Freedom of Information laws in the state. We thought it went well.
- Oct. 24, 2002: Karlen Evans and The Public Forum
The chapter had local talk radio host Karlen Evans talk about The Public Forum, a new initiative she's helping lead that aims to help facilitate "fair and balanced discourse of current events and public policy."
- Nov. 13, 2002: Breakfast with Gov. Don Sundquist
The Middle Tennessee Professional Chapter continued its tradition in recent years of having a breakfast meeting with our governor - only this year, Gov. Sundquist addressed the group just days after a new governor, and one from the opposing party, was elected.
On this morning at the downtown Sheraton, Gov. Sundquist spoke of the defeat his party's candidate, Van Hilleary, had suffered at the polls just days before, and again SPJ had been a forum for newsmakers to make news. (Attached is a printout of a news story written about Sundquist's comments to SPJ.)
- Feb. 20, 2003: Covering Nashville Business
In this luncheon meeting at 12th and Porter, SPJ was host of a panel of top local business journalists who talked about their successes and the biggest coverage areas they saw on the horizon. Our panelists were Bill Choyke, business editor, The Tennessean; Brian Courtney, associate editor, NashvillePost.com and Nashville Post magazine; Jeremy Heidt, business editor, The City Paper; and Kenneth Pybus, editor, Nashville Business Journal. Our moderator was local free-lance political and business reporter Bill Hobbs.
- April 9, 2003: Gaylord Entertainment
When our panelists in February talked about how they wished they had more access to one of Nashville's major business players, they inadvertently helped launch the idea for our April luncheon panel. Gaylord Entertainment, the publicly traded company that owns the Grand Ole Opry and various other high-profile business ventures here, was the subject of our April luncheon, held at Amerigo restaurant. Chapter members were treated to a presentation by Gaylord's chief of corporate communications, and then they got to ask some tough questions.
- April 23, 2003: "When Journalists Go PR"
In a tremendously successful luncheon meeting, news people flocked to our luncheon on the subject of reporters crossing the line to the proverbial other side. A panel of local journalists who had recently made the switch was moderated by Gail Kerr, an editor-turned-columnist for The Tennessean and former chapter president.
- May 21, 2003: Covering Features
We had to move extra chairs into the meeting room at Amerigo for our most recent meeting, for which we had a panel consisting of Bruce Dobie, editor, The Nashville Scene; Danny Solomon, lifestyles editor, The City Paper; and Laurie Holloway, assistant managing editor/features for The Tennessean. Moderated by chapter board member Larry Burriss, a journalism professor at Middle Tennessee State University, the panel talked about the increasingly blurred line between features and hard news, among other topics.
B. Additional chapter programs
Our chapter donated $500 in March to help the National Freedom of Information Coalition put on its annual convention here in Nashville. It was held at the Vanderbilt Marriott May 16-18.
Among the attendees at the NFOIC conference from our local SPJ chapter were interim president Jennifer Peebles, treasurer Frank Gibson and vice president/programs Milt Capps. A copy of the conference schedule is attached.
In recent months, our chapter board also voted to make the chapter a founding member of a new group called the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, or TCOG. TCOG will be a First Amendment and FOI-advocacy organization with members from across the state. Chapter treasurer Frank Gibson is among those helping launch TCOG. A prospectus for TCOG is attached.
Additionally, the chapter's annual Duffers' Golf Tournament was held on June 8 at Henry Horton State Park, thanks to the efforts of longtime chapter member Duren Cheek. The tournament serves as a fund-raiser for our college scholarship fund (more details on the scholarship below).
Also, in May, our chapter board voted to look at reviving the annual Gridiron cabaret in 2004. The Gridiron, which the chapter last held in 1999, has served as the chapter's major fund-raiser for our scholarship program.
C. Student interaction
This past year, our chapter continued its longstanding scholarship program, which is named in honor of longtime Tennessee Capitol Hill reporter Drue Smith. In fall 2002, we gave out another $1,500 scholarship, this time to Middle Tennessee State University student Terra Grant, who has been serving as general manager of her college's Channel 10 television station.
Currently, our chapter is undertaking a review of the scholarship program and trying to formalize criteria for its applicants. Our chapter's immediate past president, Kent Flanagan, is heading the scholarship review.
D. Membership efforts
Our membership rolls have generally held steady in 2002-03, at about 65 or so members.
Through our e-mail and fax chapter newsletter and our Web site - http://www.spj.org/Nashville - we are continuing to try to steer potential members toward joining. We now have accurate and up-to-date membership rosters that will help us target lapsed members along with those who have never joined.
Recruiting more members will be one of our priorities in 2003-04.
E. Chapter communication
With numerous chapter meetings, an e-mail/fax newsletter and a Web site, our chapter leadership has consistently updated the membership about what the chapter is up to.
Our e-mail/fax newsletter, called The Middle Tennessee Journalist, updates members and nonmembers about SPJ luncheons and other journalism-related functions in the Nashville area. Sharon Fitzgerald is our newsletter editor.
Our Web site offers members and nonmembers updates on upcoming chapter programs, news about chapter elections and other business, and the full text of board meeting minutes and our chapter bylaws, along with links potential members can follow to spj.org to join the society online. A printout of the site as it appears today is attached.
Aside from its regular meetings, the chapter board communicates mainly via e-mail. Through e-mail from the various officers, we keep abreast of logistics and arrangements for upcoming programs, chapter financial matters, meeting reminders and agendas, concerns raised by the chapter membership, news from the journalism world and other issues.
III. Chapter evaluation
A. Strengths and weaknesses
Our chapter has come a long way in 2002-03 and has done a good job of coming back to life since being lifted out of dormancy in 2000. We helped a budding journalist pay for college, put on seven programs that brought journalists together to talk about issues in our field and committed ourselves to helping launch a First Amendment coalition for Tennessee.
Our major priority in 2003-04 will be increasing membership. We especially need more working journalists to join and become involved in the chapter, and from that group we particularly need more young journalists and more journalists from electronic media. Our chapter also needs more diversity, both among its membership and its leadership.
Overall, the future looks bright for our chapter. We will be working to set up a formalized system for doling out our Drue Smith journalism scholarship. In the coming year we also will be working on reviving our Gridiron cabaret and attracting more attendees to our annual golf tournament, both of which serve as fund-raisers for the scholarship.
B. Chapter star ranking
Using the criteria provided by our national headquarters, I believe our chapter attained the rank of four stars in 2002-03. We met all the criteria for four-star chapters:-
Four-star chapters hold six full-membership meetings on journalism-related topics. We held seven this year.
- Four-star chapters offer scholarships or mentoring programs. We gave out a $1,500 scholarship this year and are working on fund-raising efforts.
- Board members of four-star chapters are in communication with each other and their leadership. We didn't have much communication with national or regional this year, largely because we just didn't have anything that we needed to bother them about (except when we didn't get our annual report form in time as we thought we would - more on that below).
- Four-star chapters communicate with their membership via newsletters, e-mail or a Web site. We use all three. Our newsletters come out via fax and e-mail well in advance of each membership meeting or other major chapter event, and our Web site is updated on a similar schedule.
- Four-star chapters file their annual reports on time. We humbly request a bye on this one. We would have filed this report on time, but we waited for our report form to come in the mail, and it never showed up, so then we started calling and asked for it to be faxed to us. We got it on June 19 and we are finishing it up and returning it to the national headquarters as soon as possible.
- Four-star chapters are represented at regional and national meetings. We were represented in 2002-03 at both.
- Four-star chapters are successful in recruiting new members. Our membership numbers have roughly held steady this year, signifying to us that we are recruiting new members as fast as existing members are leaving Nashville, retiring or otherwise getting out of journalism. Increasing membership will be a top priority for us next year.
This concludes our annual report for 2002-03.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Peebles
President, 2003-04
Middle Tennessee Professional Chapter
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