The Deadline Club-New York Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists
Proudly Endorses J. Alex Tarquinio for President-Elect
of the National Society of Professional Journalists
The Deadline Club-New York Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists proudly endorses J. Alex Tarquinio to serve as President-Elect of its national governing body, The Society of Professional Journalists. Find out more at her campaign website: http://alextarquinio.com/
Tarquinio is the current national SPJ Secretary-Treasurer and served as two-term president and two-term chairwoman of the New York chapter, one of the nation’s largest.
“Alex worked tirelessly to enhance our organization and further its mission, increasing our focus on advocacy, professional development, scholarships and student outreach,” said Michael Arena, president of the Deadline Club-NY SPJ Chapter.
“Even after joining the national SPJ board three years ago, and while serving as the national SPJ Secretary-Treasurer and a member of the SDX Foundation this year, she found time to offer guidance and advice to our chapter leadership,” he said. He added that Tarquinio has proven her dedication to both the local and national organizations by representing The Deadline Club as a delegate at most of the national conventions over the past decade, where she encouraged the club’s delegates to support such landmark initiatives as One Member, One Vote and the ethics code overhaul.
All SPJ members are eligible to vote for the national board of the Society of Professional Journalists. Ballots will be emailed to you during the Excellence in Journalism conference from September 7 to 9.
“Lucille Ball, who was one of the shrewdest businesspeople in Hollywood, once said that ‘if you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.’ Lucy’s observation applies directly to Alex,” said Deadline Club Past President Steve Dunlop.
“Alex is a dynamo. She does what others just talk about,” Dunlop added. “Having worked closely with her for the last several years in my role on the Advisory Council of the Deadline Club, I can vouch for that.”
Alex Tarquinio
Tarquinio helped to transform the New York chapter during her time as president. Under her leadership, the income from our annual awards contest grew exponentially because she consolidated finances, digitized both the awards contest and scholarship entry process, and moved the annual awards dinner to the prestigious Waldorf-Astoria.
These changes contributed to an immediate 60% increase in contest entries, allowing the chapter to dramatically increase the amount of scholarships to deserving local journalism students each year, from $3,000 before her term to $10,000 during her term and every year since. She led the effort to upgrade the chapter website, overhaul the bylaws and recruit diverse journalists to the board from top-flight media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Reuters, Bloomberg, Fortune, Yahoo, AOL, Huffington Post and The Guardian.
She produced monthly events, and reached out to other journalism groups such as the Online News Association and the South Asian Journalists Association to co-host mixers.
She revived the New York Journalism Hall of Fame, an important club tradition that had been dormant for 13 years, and which she will chair again in November 2017 in Manhattan.
She encouraged the board to advocate on behalf of journalists who were arrested while covering the Occupy Wall Street protests. As president, she authored several statements for the Deadline Club website about issues of access covering police events, and the removal of public gun ownership records by the State of New York. She led a delegation of board members who met with New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly to discuss the police mishandling or arrests of journalists, particularly photojournalists, covering the OWS protests.
During her presidency, club membership grew to the point where we became the largest SPJ chapter, and we were recognized as the Large SPJ Chapter of the Year. Alex was personally recognized with SPJ’s Howard S. Dubin Outstanding Pro Member Award. In addition to her current roles on the national SPJ and SDX boards, she serves on several national committees. She is the sole SPJ representative to the Excellence in Journalism (#EIJ17) Programming Committee, along with representatives from RTDNA and NAHJ. She chairs the Finance Committee and serves on the Legal Defense Fund Committee and the Publications Committee.
How to Cast Your Vote for Alex
All SPJ members are eligible to vote for the national board of the Society of Professional Journalists. Ballots will be emailed to you during the Excellence in Journalism conference from September 7 to 9.
Get ready to vote:
· Make sure your membership dues and email address on record are current ASAP. You can check by going to www.spj.org and clicking “sign in” in the upper left corner of your computer screen, or “member login” on your phone, or by contacting membership coordinator Chrystal Parvin at cparvin@hq.spj.org or Associate Executive Director Tara Puckey at tpuckey@hq.spj.org.
· Check to make sure that you’re receiving SPJ emails, and that they’re not going to your spam or promotions folder.
· Keep an eye out for the voting ballot that will be emailed to all members of record on the evening of Thursday, September 7.Voting will end on Saturday, September 9. It only takes a few minutes to follow the link and cast your ballot.
For more than 100 years the Society of Professional Journalists has been dedicated to encouraging a climate in which journalism can be practiced more freely and fully, stimulating high standards and ethical behavior in the practice of journalism and perpetuating a free press.
