Wednesday morning, the SPJ chapter in Florida sent out an email to all of the SPJ members it could find across the nation, reporting in detail on the deep, deep insolvency of the national SPJ organization. If you received this, you know the story. If not, long story short: The national organization is nearly $400,000 in debt, hasn’t been forthcoming about it, and set to add more to that with this weekend’s national conference.
Bits and pieces of this story have dribbled out of national board meetings for more than a year, and we on the SPJ Rio Grande board have seen the dribbles and waited for some kind of hint as to what we’re supposed to do about them.
In the meantime, for more than three years now, we also have been ever-more-forcefully pestering the national organization for an updated membership list – tracking membership being one of the main responsibilities of the national group. And for three years, we have received either nothing or lists with almost no one on them. Essentially for three years we haven’t known exactly who our members are.
Yesterday’s email blast from the Sunshine State (the irony!) has prompted SPJ Rio Grande board members to start crafting an escape plan in the event that the national organization collapses. We don’t know that it will, but SPJRG exists as a chapter of the national organization, and its bylaws don’t clearly say what happens to chapters – and their bank accounts – should the mothership crash and burn.
To be clear:
- SPJ Rio Grande did not contribute to the problems currently afflicting SPJ national.
- SPJ Rio Grande is solvent.
- SPJ Rio Grande is stable.
- SPJ Rio Grande is dedicated to staying put and making plans for the future.
Proving those facts, we held a very successful regional conference last weekend at the Albuquerque Journal and we still offer a monthly $400 reporting grant to reporters anywhere in the state (and El Paso!). Take our money – please!
All of this is to say that your local chapter’s board has been carrying on with business while monitoring the national issues. Board member Tom Johnson will be at the SPJ national convention this weekend and will be asking the national board what’s going on and how we can protect our group. Up to now, it has simply been unclear what in the world was going on with the national organization or what we could do.
Want to participate in what happens next with SPJ Rio Grande? Soon we will send out a link for next month’s board meeting. Feel free to join in with comments and suggestions. If you can’t make the Zoom meeting in October, we still want to hear from you. Shoot us an email with your thoughts and/or questions anytime at spjriogrande@gmail.com.
In addition, you can sign up for a couple of email lists that are tracking the national issues and working on plans in near-real time: spjflorida@gmail.com and/or https://spjrefresh.com/
And below is Wednesday morning’s original email from the Florida chapter. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a doozy.
Yours in facts,
Jerry Redfern
SPJ Rio Grande Chapter President
This is the message sent by the Florida chapter Wednesday morning:
An urgent message from SPJ’s Florida chapter…
SPJ faces a budget crisis
In late August, SPJ leaders discovered they were running an annual budget deficit of $288,000. They did not tell the membership.
On Thursday, those same leaders learned the deficit has grown to $391,000. They might not be able to cover that, and they don’t want you to know this.
What happened last week
SPJ’s Finance Committee met Thursday afternoon. Committee member Frank LoMonte asked SPJ’s accounting consultant, “If we end up anywhere near the $400,000 in-the-red projection, what are our reserves?”
The consultant replied, “The rainy day fund has $319,000.”
On that same Zoom call, SPJ leaders also learned membership has dropped to 4,136, down from over 10,000 a decade ago. Only around 2,600 are professional members.
They also earned this week’s annual convention in Las Vegas is running $161,000 in the red, leading president-elect Ashanti Blaize-Hopkins to muse, “There’s a huge part of me that says we should take next year off” and convert the in-person convention into a virtual one.
Why you don’t know this
SPJ treasurer Israel Balderas concluded his report by warning, “The idea that there are better days ahead, I’m not sure about.”
Committee member and SPJ past president Patti Newberry then made an impassioned plea…
We should share this information with our wider membership. I greatly fear that we will go to our convention, and this will seem like fresh information that we’ve hidden from members. They will be shocked, surprised, and outraged.
Balderas replied, “I think we’ve worked very hard to be open and transparent. … If you’re surprised, you haven’t been paying attention.”
In fact, SPJ’s president, president-elect, and treasurer haven’t even fully informed the national board of directors, based on what some directors have told us.
Why you know now
SPJ Florida’s board of directors voted this weekend to heed Newberry’s plea. So we’re notifying SPJ members. If this is an unwelcome intrusion, we apologize. We won’t be emailing you again.
What you can do
SPJ holds its annual elections for the national board of directors starting Thursday. We implore you to contact the candidates and ask about their plans – not just to stabilize SPJ’s finances but to keep the organization in existence.
You can also join SPJ’s grassroots listserv, called SPJ Refresh. It’s free, and more than 100 chapter leaders and former national leaders are there discussing these issues.
If you want to learn more about SPJ’s financial situation, read the SPJ Refresh report on the passage of the annual budget in April.
Let’s save the organization to which we’ve all given so much time, money, loyalty, and affection. We’d love to discuss this with you. Email us at spjflorida@gmail.com.
