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For those who missed the Region 5 conference in Louisville, Ky., you missed a good one. Bob Edwards' talk at the Mark of Excellence awards luncheon was priceless. Also in attendance was U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY), believed to be the only card-carrying SPJ member in Congress. You can see and hear him at spj.org in a video made by SPJ National President Christine Tatum, who was in everyone's face in her determined and laudable effort to populate spj.org with multimedia. I'll be proposing in the weeks ahead that next year's Spring Conference be held somewhere in Indiana. Any chapter want to volunteer? You'll have a tough time matching the Louisville program, but please try. In the intervening time, the national board is going to be discussing the spring conferences, deciding if we should change the orientation of them (to students only, for instance) or the timing (schools wrap up quite early in some places, even having final exams in April). Any ideas you have are welcomed.. I also am looking for info on what your chapter did for Ethics Week. My students, for example, had a movie night in which we watched "Shattered Glass" and then talked about it, and the co-presidents of the chapter jointly wrote a column for The Daily Northwestern about journalism ethics for all the campus to consider. What happened in your chapter? Around the region, the Chicago Headline Club held its Peter Lisagor Awards ceremony April 27 and among those winning a Lisagor, the local equivalent of the Pulitzer, was our own Molly McDonough, national board member at large! Molly and co-authors Terry Carter and Siobhan Morrissey won the Lisagore for In-Depth Reporting in a Trade or Specialty Magazine, Newspaper or Newsletter. Molly works in Chicago for the ABA Journal. Same kind of great work she does for SPJ.  November 2006 The students at Indiana University are in a tussle with the Federal Communications Commission because the FCC has awarded the student radio station’s frequency to a commercial station. The students and the university have petitioned the FCC for reconsideration. It’s not really an SPJ issue (the folks at the commercial station may be SPJ members, too) but it is an issue that tells you something about this FCC as it regards profit-making interests and maybe something about it how it regards those liberal-leaning students. If you want to write in support of the nearly 200 students involved in the station’s news and entertainment divisions, you should reference Docket 06-77, FM Table of Allotments, Edinburgh, Indiana 100.3 MHz. The student station is WIUX-LP and has existed at that frequency since 1967. Send it to the Federal Communications Commission, Washington, D.C., 20554. Our spring Region 5 conference is coming together under the leadership of Kathy Francis and the Louisville Pro chapter. We’re booked for April 20 and 21. The workshops and professional development sessions on Saturday will be held at the University of Louisville’s school of business and the Mark of Excellence luncheon will be at the nearby Speed Museum. (By the way, the famed NPR voice of Bob Edwards will deliver the MOE luncheon keynote address.) Kathy, the Louisville Pro prez, and her crew are looking for a venue for the Friday night kickoff reception. More details later. The last The SPJ membership nationally number I looked at tell us that membership nationally has slipped under 9,000, to 8971 as of Nov. 3. Meanwhile, in Region 5, there are 1,061 members — meaning we have more than 40% more members than the average region. There are 12 regions in SPJ.
October 2006Put a big circle around the date April 21, 2007 in your calendar. That’s when Region 5 will hold its spring conference in Louisville, Ky. Kathy Francis, president of SPJ’s Louisville Pro chapter; her board; and I are working on the program. We hope to begin with a fun evening event on Friday, April 20, and present programs all day Saturday. The Saturday program will, of course, include the presentation of SPJ’s regional Mark of Excellence Awards, which honors the best in collegiate journalism. Speaking of the MOE awards, Regions 3 and 5 will swap student entries, which will be judged by professional SPJ members. Yes, I am already looking for volunteer judges. If you’re a pro working in Region 5 and willing to volunteer, please let me know soon. Judging will take place in February and March. Another date to remember: April 27, 2007. That’s when SPJ’s Indiana Pro chapter will hold its annual statewide awards banquet honoring the best in Indiana journalism. It’s important to note here that when SPJ’s headquarters called this fall about imposing the new “Regional Service Fee” on each chapter in Region 5, I told them I was opting out — at least this year. The fee was created a year ago to support regional activities and is taking effect this fall in some regions. In Region 5, we are going to attempt a voluntary fee, oxymoron that it is, to enable our chapters to contribute what they can to support a regional kitty. The kitty will be used to underwrite the costs of running the region, especially the regional spring conference. Each chapter is asked to send a check for the amount it can afford. The fee, had it been imposed, would have been scaled from $1 per member for small chapters to $3 per member for the region’s large chapters. Again, please send what you can. I am planning to get out and visit some chapters this year! I’m happy to make presentations — or just enjoy food and drinks with you. If you’d like to include me in one of your events, please contact me at profroth@northwestern.edu. |
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