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Membership Committee Chair

Holly Edgell
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Holly Edgell lives in Cincinnati, where she recently joined Scripps-owned WCPO as Neighborhood News Editor for WCPO.com. She comes to the roster of SPJ Committee leaders with experience in journalism and academia.

From February to November 2012, Edgell worked as a content strategist, consultant and freelance journalist in St. Louis. Before that she was one of two regional editors for Patch.com in metro St. Louis, where she hired a team of 13 journalists to launch and grow 12 community news and information websites.

Edgell joined Patch.com from her position as an assistant professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and the Emmy-award winning executive producer at KOMU-TV (NBC) in Columbia, MO. She also served as the adviser for the Missouri School of Journalism student chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Her previous experience includes jobs as a newscast producer in Youngstown, Ohio, at WFMJ-TV and in Pittsburgh at WTAE-TV. Edgell's career later took her to Cleveland, where she worked as medical news producer at duopoly WOIO-TV and WUAB-TV, and to Detroit's WDIV-TV, where she worked as consumer news producer. Edgell spent more than four years as an assistant professor in Florida A&M University's journalism school.

At age 21, Edgell was the first news director for Great Belize Television in Belize, where she was born. She helped launch “News 5,” the first independent (non-government) television news program to air in that country. Edgell earned a master's degree in journalism with a concentration in media management at Kent State University in Ohio. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Michigan State University. She has traveled extensively in Africa, Asia, North America and Europe and speaks Spanish.

In her spare time, Edgell coordinates training for journalists and aspiring journalists in Belize, in conjunction with the University of the West Indies, Open Campus.

She also writes fiction and had her short story, “The Means and the End,” published in Picayune Lit Review. Her story, “Heaven and the Deep Blue Sea” appears in two journals: Pisgah Lit Review and Dialogo. "Sea Change" appears in the latest issue of Caribbean Writer.

Home > Become an SPJ Member > Why Join SPJ? > Why I’m a Member > A matter of values (and value)

Why I’m a Member

David Joachim, New York Times
A matter of values (and value)

I joined SPJ 15 years ago to make contact with people who could help me get started in journalism. I stay in SPJ because those contacts are now my friends, and we do important work together.

David Joachim is the business weekend editor at The New York Times, and he writes for several sections of the paper. Before he joined The Times in 2005, he spent a decade in the technology press, most recently as group editor for six magazines published by CMP Media. He is also the immediate past president of the Deadline Club, the New York City chapter of SPJ.

He has been a member of SPJ for 15 years, because it is the one place where he can rant about press freedoms, and people will actually listen. It reminds him that he became a journalist not for the riches but to be a part of an important component of our democracy, and he sees the society's programs as vital to the profession.

More information is at davidjoachim.com.

We share a central philosophy about the importance of protecting free expression in a democracy. We speak in shorthand, which I'm sure is annoying to any civilian who enters our airspace during a heated discussion. It comforts me to know that when I get excited about something, my SPJ friends are also excited; when I worry, they worry; when I am outraged, they are outraged.

I use e-mail to pass along a lot of news about the news. (I am forever in your debt, Mr. Romenesko.) I try to be economical about it, but I don't succeed at that very often. It's easy to overdo it when I know that the person (OK, people) on the receiving end will share my interest. Usually I don't even bother to preface the article with something like, "I thought you would be interested in this because..." No explanation is needed. They just know.

My newsroom is as frantic as anyone's, and sometimes I get so busy that I disappear from the SPJ radar. During those times, I take comfort from knowing that even though I am disengaged, a passionate and dedicated group of people who share my values is hard at work, making sure that journalists like me are not prevented from doing our job.

SPJ keeps me in tune with the industry, and it has brought me friends for life. I owe SPJ a whole lot more than it owes me.