PRESIDENT'S COLUMN
Richard Maxwell, IABC/Fort Worth
Happy New Year!
As we begin a new year, let's reflect on the Fort Worth IABC chapter's accomplishments in 2005. Membership grew 10 percent, meeting attendance was up, and programming continued to deliver exceptional professional development content. I want to thank our dedicated volunteer board members for their commitment to IABC, and I look forward to working with them again this year.
IABC international also continued to prosper. The 2006 International Conference is June 4-7 in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia. Visit IABC.com for details.
It's not too early to begin preparing your 2006 Bronze, Silver and Gold Quill Award entries. The Fort Worth Bronze Quill Awards banquet will be Tuesday, June 27, and the Silver Quill Awards will be announced at the Southern Region Conference in the fall in Kansas City. The Gold Quill final deadline is Feb. 9, with the awards announced in April. Gold Quill entry information is at IABC.com.
We appreciate Deena Graves (IABC/Dallas past president) with bottomLINE Communications, Brinker's Andrea Scott and Jocelyn Janota at United Cooperative Services for renewing their membership. Your chapter board intends to publish an updated directory soon that will make it easy to find these folks and all of your fellow chapter members. Thanks, Paul Sturiale, for coordinating this project.
Our next luncheon meeting will be Tuesday, Jan. 24, at the Petroleum Club, and the program will be "30 Ideas in 30 Minutes." Stay tuned for details.
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OVER & OUT
John Dycus, Fort Worth SPJ
Welcome to yet another new advertiser, the Reasons Group.
Back home in Indiana: Wendy Hoke is collecting the names of SPJ members who freelance and who want to be included in a database aimed at generating referrals. Send name, address, phone and fax numbers, e-mail address and web address, specialties, markets and experience to wendyhoke@comcast.net. ... SPJ has urged Clear Channel radio group to stop allowing its stations to sell naming rights to their newsrooms. WIBA, a Clear Channel radio station in Madison, Wis., sold the naming rights for its newsroom to a local bank. ... Julie Grimes, one of those people you can't praise too much, has advanced from SPJ deputy executive director to Sigma Delta Chi Foundation associate executive director in charge of the foundation's development and administration. Good girls do finish first. ... SPJ added its name to a letter urging President Bush to shed light on how $62.3 billion in Hurricane Katrina relief is being spent. The letter states, in part: "We call on President Bush to post on the Internet copies of every contract, requisition, task/delivery order, agreement or order authorization for spending on Hurricane Katrina relief and reconstruction as soon as contracts are signed, checks are approved or money is disbursed. For such spending that has already occurred, we urge you to direct agencies to put such information online as soon as possible." Indviduals can add their name to the letter at OpenTheGovernment.org. ...
The University of Florida Interactive Media Lab offers up Las Vegas convention highlights -- webcasts of former New York Times editor Bill Kovach on "The Next Journalism," "Drawing in Audiences with a High-Tech Approach," "How to Watchdog Charities," "Immigration in the Heartland: News You Need to Know" and more -- at http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/spj. SPJ's 2006 national meeting is in Chicago. White Sox fans may still be celebrating the '05 World Series. ...
The University of Georgia's annual survey of journalism and mass communication includes salary information for recent graduates. See grady.uga.edu/annualsurveys. Surveys from 2005 through 2007 are funded in part by SPJ's Sigma Delta Chi Foundation. And to be more marketable in this age of newsroom job cuts, all sorts of professional development opportunities await at JournalismTraining.org, a site maintained by SPJ.
Closing words: "I teach at the largest Baptist university in the world. I'm a religious person. And my basic perspective is intelligent design doesn't belong in science class." -- Derek Davis, director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor ... "Never assume the obvious is true." -- William Safire ... "The meaning of life is to go back to sleep and hope that tomorrow will be a better day." -- "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz
Closing words II, consistency of thought division: "Therefore, intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes." -- Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., in a 2002 Washington Times op-ed piece ... "I'm not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom." -- Santorum in August on National Public Radio
Closing words III, time to thwack a blowhard: "Perhaps I'm particularly sensitive to religious hypocrites because I've spent a chunk of time abroad watching Muslim versions of Mr. (Bill) O'Reilly -- demagogic table-thumpers who exploit public religiosity as a cynical ploy to gain attention and money. ... I have a challenge for Mr. O'Reilly: If you really want to defend traditional values, then come with me on a trip to Darfur. I'll introduce you to mothers who have had their babies clubbed to death in front of them, to teenage girls who have been gang-raped and then mutilated -- and to the government-armed thugs who do these things. You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared. If you try to bully some of the goons in Darfur, they'll just hack your head off. But you'll also meet some genuine conservative Christians -- aid workers who live the Gospel instead of sputtering about it -- and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause." -- op-ed columnist Nicholas Kristof, writing Dec. 18 in The New York Times, taking note of Bill O'Reilly's focus on keeping the Christmas in Christmas and suggesting that O'Reilly might honor the season better by exposing the continuing genocide in Darfur, which Kristof says the Fox TV personality has "ignored"
Closing words IV, G.W.B. & the Pharisees bracket: "If the president does it, it can't be illegal." -- Richard Nixon ... "I was in that battle from the very beginning to the very end. I was with Iraqi units right there on the front line as they were battling with al Qaeda. They were not leading. They were being led by the U.S. green beret special forces with them. Green berets who were following an American plan of attack who were advancing with these Iraqi units as and when they were told to do so by the American battle planners. The Iraqis led nothing." -- Time magazine reporter Michael Ware, concerning an assault on the city of Tal Afar that President Bush on Nov. 30 said Iraqi security forces "primarily led"; Bush highlighted the battle as an "especially clear" sign of the progress Iraq security forces were making in Iraq ... "This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture." -- William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, on this year's White House Christmas cards, which end with a generic end-of-the-year message, wishing 1.4 million of the president's close friends and supporters a happy "holiday season"
