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PRESIDENT'S COLUMN
Richard Maxwell, IABC/Fort Worth
Greetings and happy Easter season to you, my fellow communicators.
We do listen to you, you know, and in a membership survey last year you said you wanted more information about blogs. So our March 28 meeting was a half-day seminar led by Stacy Wilson, ABC, president of Eloquor Consulting in Colorado, on the hot topics of portals, podcasting, "real simple syndication" (RSS) and acquiring the skills necessary to become an effective internal communication consultant. Both the seminar and Stacy's luncheon presentation were well-received.
Reminder: The IABC 2006 International Conference, June 4-7 in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, will attract more than 1,400 communicators for a career-altering program that's a true bargain for all that it delivers: 80 targeted sessions, headline-grabbing keynotes, the latest best practices from the experts, and much more. Sign up by May 8 to take advantage of early registration rates. Details at iabc.com/ic.
Can't make Vancouver this summer, but maybe Kansas City this fall? The IABC Southern Regional Conference, Sept. 24-26, promises national-caliber speakers at an affordable price and smack in the middle of the beautiful, walkable Country Club Plaza shopping/entertainment district.
When your brain is stuffed to bursting with new ideas for getting ahead, take time out at the nearby world-famous galleries and museums, watch the baseball Royals take on Detroit, or enjoy a jumping night life that includes four casinos and jazz and blues to beat the band. The conference will be great, and with you there we've got a masterpiece in the making. Get fired up at kciabc.org/southernconference/.
Welcome, new members Mick Doherty, Shari Shaver and Annette Kearns. Thanks for joining IABC. We hope to see you at the April 25 luncheon meeting.
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OVER & OUT
John Dycus, Fort Worth SPJ
Martha Hand Brown looked like $100,000 in unmarked $20s the last time I saw her, March 8, 2005, at the christening of TCU's Schieffer School of Journalism. She was dressed 'way up, smiling, happy, walking a little slow, perhaps, on the arm of her son, Houston newsman (and UTA Shorthorn ex) Kenny Hand, but that's your right at 82. That's the Martha I knew -- attractive, full of gusto, going places -- and quite the reporter. Good memories. ...
Thanks, Lloyd Goodman and UTA Student Publications, for hosting the March SPJ meeting with crusading Illinois student journalist Margaret Hosty. Great crowd, and a double handful of pointed assertions from a woman fighting the fight for press freedom. Let's do it again. ...
A factoid to ponder from SPJ national. Journalists are significantly more ethical than the average adult, a recent study found, the newsies being eclipsed only by seminarians, doctors and medical students. Using the results of a questionnaire that asked, "How would you handle this situation?," journalists had an average score of 48.7 on a 100-point scale. What that means: Almost half the time, members of the profession make decisions based on the best quality of ethical reasoning. The seminarians and philosophers scored 65.1, medical students 50.2, practicing physicians 49.2. Junior high school students scored the lowest with 20.0, just below prison inmates with 23.7.
Closing words: "It's OK to be sheep, but do understand that the ultimate destination is either a shearing or a slaughter." -- Star-Telegram columnist Randy Galloway, addressing those Dallas Cowboys fans "who faithfully follow the football command of the Valley Ranch herders" ... "The man who enters a library is in the best society this world affords; the good and the great welcome him, surround him, and humbly ask to be allowed to become his servants." -- Andrew Carnegie, who after selling the Carnegie Steel Co. to J.P. Morgan for $250 million would go on to give money to create more than 2,500 libraries in the United States and Britain
Closing words II, literary division: "We [humans] are the species that clamors to be lied to." -- Joyce Carol Oates ... "Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace." -- E.B. White ... "I always wanted to write when I was a kid; it just never occurred to me that you could have a job that didn't involve any actual work. ... I felt it would be fun to have a job like that where you could make stuff up and be irresponsible and get paid for it." -- Dave Barry ... "Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows, that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squawl for attention." -- George Orwell
Closing words III, from the front lines of war: "Everyone wants to read their view of the war in your story. To me the only issue is whether our stories are real or not. I never got complaints from the people who were involved in the subject matter of the stories. The job of soldiering over there is incredibly difficult. I have tremendous respect for those guys. The criticism completely misses the point. Iraq is on the verge of civil war. Where's the good news?" -- Steve Fainaru of The Washington Post after recently completing a 14-month stint in Iraq ... "Most Iraqis I speak to say, 'Actually, most reporters get it wrong,' that the situation on the ground is actually worse than the images we project on television. ... We'll see more and more reports coming out by the media explaining how they are covering the war, and I think the Bush administration overplayed their hand in trying to blame their problems on the media." -- NBC Baghdad correspondent Richard Engel ... "I've been looking hard, but in two weeks I haven't found an Iraqi optimist. In the summer of 2004, I profiled a band of young artists who braved dangerous roads to get away from Baghdad and paint pretty pictures of the Tigris River. Now they're homebound. There is a similar sense of newfound hopelessness in the faces of the Iraqis I work with. ... It is difficult to communicate just how violent Baghdad has become." -- The New York Times' Jeffrey Gettleman ... "The people of Karabilah hate the foreigners who crossed the border and entered their areas and got into a fight with the Americans. The residents now also hate the American occupiers who demolished their houses with bombs and killed their families ... and now the people of Karabilah want to join the resistance against the Americans for what they did." -- Osama Jadaan al Dulaimi, a tribal leader in Karabilah, a town near the Syrian border that U.S. planes hit with bombs or missiles on at least 17 days between October 2005 and February 2006
