Remember Your Roots p. 20

By: Tony Case

New Society of Professional Journalists national president says
newspaper people need to help keep the organization vital sp.

THE SOCIETY OF Professional Journalists needs the support of newspaper people who had close ties to the organization as students or beginners in the field, the new SPJ president urges.
Onetime members who graduated to such groups as the American Society of Newspaper Editors and Newspaper Association of America should remember that "at some point in time, SPJ meant a lot to them, and they need to keep it alive, vibrant and timely," Reginald Stuart, assistant news editor in Knight-Ridder's Washington bureau, said in an interview following the SPJ convention.
SPJ "is still the only forum for many journalists, and our network is the only one they have access to when they have problems," he added. "We're there when people need us."
One example of SPJ's efforts on behalf of journalists is its successful push, along with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and National Security Archive, for the release of the independent counsel's final report on the Iran-contra investigation.
Ruling on a motion by the three parties, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found it "in the public interest that as full a disclosure as possible be made" (E&P, Dec. 11, p. 45).
"All the newspapers ran front-page stories, but not a single paper paid a dime for the litigation . . . and we haven't done a lot of horn-blowing about that," Stuart said.
Stuart takes the SPJ reins as the group is recovering from past financial and membership woes.
"We're going to have a darn good year," he predicted.
About 1,000 people traveled to Nashville last month for the annual convention, a major moneymaker for the association. Only 700 conferees showed up last year in Miami.
Thanks to budget cuts, fund-raising and rebounding advertising at the Quill, the SPJ magazine, the association reported a surplus of about $100,000 last fiscal year. The previous year, it suffered with a deficit of over $100,000.
SPJ reported a 13% increase in revenue and 5% decrease in expenses last fiscal year. The year before, revenues were up more than 22%, but expenses increased by nearly 30%.
"We're not looking at how we're going to pay the bills each month but at how we're going to regain our momentum as the preeminent journalism organization," Stuart said. "It's a tall order, but people who know me know I work for what I believe in. SPJ is well worth that $62 I put in the hopper every year."
Maintaining membership is key to any association's solvency, and SPJ's figure of 13,500 is holding steady after having faltered in past years. Although student membership dropped by about 100 last year, 200 were added to the professional roster.
Attracting and retaining members continues to be a challenge for SPJ, as more specialized groups ? for example, minority journalists' associations and organizations of reporters covering specific areas, such as sports, business, religion and the environment ? work to build their memberships.
Some SPJ members have resigned, Stuart revealed, because they believed the association was becoming too politically correct and "on a maddening trail to diversity."
The new president said these individuals should "understand there is room under this tent for a lot of voices, and if we adjust the organization, we will be stronger and more relevant."
Stuart, the first black president of the 85-year-old organization formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, would like to diffuse the myth that SPJ is a white male club.
"This group isn't any less diverse than many others. In some cases, we're more diverse," he said. "We have more women, more minorities, and many of them hold offices."
The national convention marked a homecoming not only for Stuart, who was born and raised in Nashville, went to Tennessee State University and got his first newspaper job at the Nashville Tennessean, but for former SPJ leaders.
Five of the last 10 SPJ national presidents have had ties to the Volunteer State, in fact.
Stuart succeeds Paul McMasters, who is executive director of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. Other past presidents include Frank Gibson, regional government and politics editor at the Tennessean; Tennessean editor Frank Sutherland, and Knoxville News-Sentinel assistant managing editor Georgiana Vines.
McMasters visited SPJ chapters in all 50 states while he was president ? ? la Al Neuharth, chairman of the Freedom Forum foundation in Arlington, Va., who traveled around the country in the 1980s to promote his baby, USA Today.
McMasters said he found on his tour "a small but firmly committed core of journalists, educators and students out there who are working hard to secure a bright future for this profession."
"I'm not going to go to all 50 states, but I'll probably call all 50," Stuart joked, adding his short-term travel plans have him visiting chapters in about a dozen states during October and November.
Stuart aims during his presidency to ensure SPJ stays on a course of financial recovery while promoting the highest professional standards. He is clearly excited about the association's new professional development program, consisting of 13 libel seminars, writing workshops and management conferences to be held throughout the country in the coming year.
As head of the self-described "largest and most broad-based membership organization for journalists in the world," Stuart has definitive, scathing criticism for the media's increasing fascination with the sensational ? the Tonya Hardings and O.J. Simpsons who have dominated the news pages and airwaves.
"At the convention, I challenged people to go back to their newsrooms and put their conscience back in their news reporting," he said. "If we exercise real restraint and realize our job is reporting the facts as much as we can and sift through the rumor and innuendo . . . it will help clean up matters a lot."
When asked why he thought these tabloid-style stories get so much ink and airtime, Stuart responded, "Look at the ratings. The public is driving it."
The populace may be entertained, but the editor fears it will come to lose its trust in news organizations.
"The media have a low rating. It's not our job to win a popularity contest, but we have to be respected," he said. "Now I'm not so sure people respect us because we jazz up the news so much."
He continued, "Let's be real. People do like the tantalizing and the sizzling
. . . so we're sort of dealing with pandering to what we know people will soak up.
"But I don't think that's our journalistic calling, to pander. Our journalistic calling is to gather the facts and present them so the public can determine what the truth is."