01-19-2025 Valley of the Sun SPJ Chapter Board Meeting Minutes
Minutes
Meeting of the Society of Professional Journalists, Valley of the Sun Pro Chapter
P.O. Box 1488, Phoenix, AZ 85001-1488
Jan. 19, 2025, 10 a.m.
Meeting called to order: 10:25 a.m.
Attendees: Tim Eigo (President), Mark Scarp (Secretary), Kerry Fehr-Snyder (Treasurer) and Deb Krol (Board Member). Absent: Nicole Greason (Vice President), Teri Carnicelli (Board Member).
NOTE: Board actions, either votes or assigned tasks, are in italicized type.
Opening
- Secretary’s report/approval of minutes from Nov. 16, 2024 – Board action: Moved Board action: Moved (Mark) and seconded (Debra). Unanimously approved.
- Treasurer’s report – Kerry reports our investments with Russell Life Points/Northwestern Mutual as of Jan. 17 lost $218.87 in the past quarter, to $19,754.79. Our checking account as of the same date contained $2,153.91, compared to $3,750.02 on Nov. 1x, 2024.
- Mark’s Mighty Minute! – Mark reported Morgan Loew, president of the First Amendment Coalition of Arizona, is meeting with former coalition attorney Dan Barr in January and will also meet with Arizona Media Association CEO Chris Kline soon. Loew plans to obtain from Barr information that could help in the reactivation of the coalition, and he plans to ask Kline for the AMA’s financial support.
- Announcement: Deb invited board members to attend the Society of Environmental Journalists convention opening reception April 24 at the Omni hotel in Tempe. She said she had access to tickets.
Old Business
- Chapter website update – Our designer, Collin, is still making minor tweaks, but revisions to phoenixspj.org are complete, and Mark has already been posting and adding photos to the site. Mark asked Tim to send him more photos of chapter events to continue to illustrate site.
- Dec. 3 Valley Media Holiday Mixer, 5:30-8 p.m., FEZ on Central – The mixer was successful, inside this year, with about 35 attendees from several media outlets.
- Dec. 4 SPJ Elections Post-Mortem Journalists’ Zoom Panel Discussion, 6-7:15 p.m. Only about 15 people were on Zoom to hear the panel. Mark posted a recording of it on the website as well as posted it to our chapter YouTube channel, SPJ Arizona.
- Scholarship essay submission winner: The winner is Mohinur Mannonova, University of Arizona
- Chapter award nominations: The sense of the board was to wait until 2025 to have a more robust process for award nominations. There will therefore be no 2024 awards.
New Business
- Don Bolles Memorial – A bill is being introduced into this year’s Legislature to try again to establish a monument in Wesley Bolin Plaza to Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, who was assassinated with a car bomb in 1976 in Phoenix. Despite overwhelming support in the state House of Representatives in 2024, a Senate committee chairman refused to hear the bill. Board action: Board support of bill moved (Tim) and seconded (Kerry) Unanimously approved.
- Proposed canceling of chapter’s X account: Board members discussed X’s fast declining number of users and the rise in a huge amount of angry and untrue political discourse, and whether the chapter’s messages are getting buried. Board members agreed to continue monitoring X as well as competing platforms Bluesky and Threads to observe trends, and to perhaps return to the subject at a later date.
- Ethics Week event — Ethics week is in late April.
- Possible spring event programming:
- Law school for journalists
- Social media and journalists – too much politics for it to be effective for journalists?
- Mega Mixer with all the other journalism organizations: Mark will check with Al Macias re his connection with JP Morgan Chase location at 44th and Camelback
- Pizza party for Cronkite students during April finals prep week \\
- We need Ethics Week program ideas – April 14-18, 2025
Adjourned: 11:21 a.m. (55 minutes)
NEXT BOARD MEETING: Sunday, March 9, 2025, 10 a.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Mark J. Scarp, Chapter Secretary
SPJ: Phoenix, Arizona Chapter 