APME First-Ever Dues Get Unanimous Approval

By: Joe Strupp Associated Press Managing Editors unanimously approved charging members annual dues for the first time in it's 75-year history.

About 50 members who gathered Friday at the group's yearly business meeting approved the proposal by a show of hands, according to a report on the APME Web site. The meeting was part of the four-day APME convention in Washington, D.C.

The $150 annual dues will take effect in 2008 and be assessed on the group's estimated 1,600 members, each of whom represent one of the Associated Press member newspapers.

APME believes just 250 members will pay dues the first year, but expects the number to increase annually.

Officials hope to raise about $40,000 in the first year, and as much as $75,000 by 2009 and $120,000 by 2012, the report said. APME Executive Director Mark Mittelstadt has said the organization's annual budget is about $500,000, with most of that coming from sponsors and corporate donations.

"Board members said the money will help professionalize the organization, which has only one full-time employee," the APME report stated. "Among the goals: Hiring a staff for fund-raising, budgeting, and outreach efforts."

"This will help us have a strategic start to our five-year plan," APME President Karen Magnuson told editors after the vote Friday.

The new dues mirror those charged by other journalism organizations, such as the National Association of Black Journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
ASNE charges dues ranging from $195 to $675, depending on the newspaper's circulation while SPJ requires dues on a scale from $36 to $90 per year.

Andrea Buck, managing editor of the Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune, said she has mixed feelings about the dues structure. "For smaller newspapers, it's a difficult amount of money for them to come up with," she told APME. "At the same time, this organization needs to be supported and funded."

APME had considered a different structure that would have charged small-circulation newspapers less but considered implementing it too difficult, officials stated.