David A. Zeeck, 2006-07 ASNE president, is executive editor of The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash.
I approach the end of my term as ASNE president with a mixture of gratitude and relief.
It’s a privilege to serve in a post like this, but I admit I look forward to having just one job again.
As the end of my term approaches, I find myself reflecting on the year. New friends and old ones come to mind. I think, too, of the many new newsrooms and cities I visited. But as I think back over the year, three lessons keep coming to mind.
1. Very little happens in ASNE that’s at the direction or in the control of the ASNE president.
The beauty of ASNE is in the wisdom and effort of individual members, people willing to take an idea or a suggestion, or bring their own, and work it to completion. Here are but two examples:
I had an idea that we should work more closely with the Online News Association. As our print and online newsrooms merge, it seems only logical that our two societies should do more joint projects, programs and training.
Pam Fine, managing editor in Indianapolis and chair of ASNE’s Interactive Media Committee, and Kinsey Wilson, executive editor of USA TODAY (online) and president of ONA, turned that notion into an inexpensive but information-packed one-day training session for newspaper editors that took place the day before ONA’s annual fall convention.
Another idea came from conversations I had with Gregory Favre and Bob Steele of the Poynter Institute, and with Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times. Those conversations occurred about the same time the U.S. attorney general and some members of Congress were suggesting reporters who disclosed controversial national security matters should be tried for treason.
From those conversations Steele and Favre went to work with Andy Alexander and David Westphal, Washington bureau chiefs for Cox and McClatchy (both of whom have served as FOI chairs for ASNE) and produced an inspirational and informative First Amendment summit that also advanced in meaningful terms our fight for a federal shield law and greater openness in the national government.
2. The ASNE staff is better and does more than you know.
They don’t do it for the money. The staff works hard, and effectively, because they believe the work we do in America’s newsrooms is important and must be supported.
While we’re busy running our newsrooms — even if we devote some extra hours to committee work, special programs or the annual convention — the staff works year-round to push the cause forward.
In the last year, with staff work as the backbone, ASNE secured a three-year $2.3 million grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation to train high school teachers to be effective journalism advisors. The ASNE High School Journalism Institutes supported by this grant (and one before it) are reinvigorating high school journalism across America. The work is nurturing the next diverse generation of young journalists, building independent scholastic media and helping all teens gain a greater appreciation of the First Amendment.
A dogged multiyear effort by Scott Bosley, executive director, and the ASNE Foundation (led by Edward Seaton), has put us on the doorstep of a multiyear, multimillion dollar challenge grant to establish a significant ASNE endowment. (Look for an announcement at the convention.)
3. Ultimately the real value of ASNE is in the professional friendships we make and the lessons we learn from one another.
The best job-hunting advice I ever got was from a fellow member over a hot dog at Camden Yards at the ASNE conference in Baltimore.
Most of the best friendships I have in this business were forged or deepened through ASNE committee work, at conventions or working on convention program segments.
Want a REAL job reference on a candidate? Advice on finding a projects editor? How to merge your online and print newsrooms? Redesign for a 48-inch web? The best source will almost always be an ASNE colleague.
Three of my favorite editor-friends from ASNE died this year: Cole Campbell, dean at the University of Nevada-Reno Reynolds School of Journalism; Gerald Boyd, Missouri j-school classmate and former managing editor of The New York Times, and Mike Levine, executive editor of The Times Record-Herald in Middletown, N.Y.
Of each I’ll remember their intellect, their energy, their humor and their love of the business, and the friendship they so willingly and generously shared.
I’ve added more editor-friends this year. And that will be a lasting blessing to me. My advice to us all is to make more friends in the business, speak to them often, tell them they’re important to you, thank them for their friendship, and ask their advice.
In the end that’s all we have in our professional lives. The work we produce and the friends we have. Treasure both. *