Carole J. Greene, President
Our November board meeting came close to being unofficial. For the first five minutes we lacked a quorum: Three members were out of town. One was ill. Two more had to work into the evening. Then two additional governors arrived and we launched our business meeting.
That occurrence gives me incentive to talk about the dedication your officers and governors give to the Press Club of Southwest Florida. Because we are far from ordinary, we sometimes forget that we ARE a club. We are not a big corporation whose board members take home handsome salaries and perks. No, we do what we do because we care about making this the best club ever.
As a club, we:
- Help journalism students through our scholarship fund
- Network with fascinating people at our meetings
- Work hard to fulfill our missions to promote quality journalism and to enrich the community through our outstanding programs
Kudos to Connie Kindsvater for mounting an informative panel of media experts to help the journalism students at FGCU discover what it takes to get—and keep—a job in media. You’ll find a detailed wrap-up of this panel elsewhere in Scoop, so here I’ll merely point out that this focused on two of our missions: Promoting quality journalism and enriching the community. The board intends to sponsor additional opportunities to mix with and mentor the FGCU J-students.
We spent some time finalizing plans for the NPC Book Fair, co-sponsored by Naples Daily News, held at Barnes & Noble on Nov. 21. David Silverberg, chair of this special event, had everything under control. Because at this writing, David’s wife is in hospital, I didn’t ask him to write a wrap-up piece for this issue of Scoop. I’ll just tell you that the 20 NPC author-members there to discuss and sign their books were quite pleased with the turnout. So was the host venue, as Barnes & Noble sold about $3,000 worth of product that they might not have sold without us. We’ll receive 15 percent of that for our scholarship fund. Everyone had a great time, and it was definitely a win-win-win. We’ll do this again.
A committee composed of Marisa Cleveland, Karla Wheeler and Sandy Reed (formerly our NPC secretary before she moved to Boston, and still our WordPress guru who puts out Scoop) will work toward making certain ALL NPC members have a listing—including a bio and photo—on our “Members Only” segment of our website. The goal is to make this our go-to source of contact information so we can eliminate the expensive printed member directory. If you don’t yet have a bio and photo, please cooperate when contacted for those. We don’t want anyone to feel left out.
If you haven’t already, please give to our scholarship fund! Nuff said.
We won’t have a board meeting in December, so our next one, on Jan. 5, 2016, will welcome those elected at our Dec. 7 annual meeting. I won’t have a “Your Board in Action” report for December, but I will write a summary of our year’s activities. Look for it with your dues notice. Yes, in January, it’ll be that time again.
In January, Kay Kluever will become our RSVP coordinator. She’ll be the “new” face at our luncheon check-in table. Please welcome her.
Let me wish you Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah; and for the new year, laughter, joy, peace, good health and prosperity plus close friends and family with whom to share all those blessings.