Club Membership Meets Amid Strong Performance

More than 60 NPC members attended the autumn membership meeting Oct. 8, the first available via a live webcast, and heard that the Club is on target to achieve profits of at least $1.4 million by the end of the year.

Treasurer Keith Hill also reported that as of Sept. 1, the Club had $1.2 million in cash and reserves, $200,000 more than had been mandated by the Board of Governors. Long term, the Club’s auditors have said the reserves should reach $3 million, the equivalent of approximately three months’ operating expenses.

A contributing factor to the strong results, Hill said, was that the Club cut the size of its losses during the traditionally slow months of July and August.

The membership unanimously approved by voice vote Constitution and Bylaws changes to streamline the number of the main membership categories to two from 12 and the number of sub-categories to 20 from 49.

Membership Secretary Angela Greiling Keane reported that the total number of members had declined from 3,497 in September 2009 to 3,324 this year. She said there were two elements of good news: the increase in members under age 35, from 299 a year ago to 314, and the increase in retired members from 532 to 566.

The membership also approved unanimously by voice vote a Constitutional change to have the president of the Eric J. Friedheim National Journalism
Library board serve as an ex officio non-voting member of the NPC Board of Governors, a change that NPC President Alan Bjerga said reflected the importance of the Library to the Club.

In his report, Bjerga said he was pleased with the way the Club’s committees had performed this year. He noted that the Speakers Committee, chaired by
Andrew Schneider, had brought in more than half of President Obama’s Cabinet-level appointments as luncheon speakers.

Bjerga also announced that:

• A new archivist has joined the staff. He is Jeffrey A. Scholsberg, who previously was at the Newseum, where he had successfully proposed acquisition of a $6 million purchase of a comprehensive privately owned collection of more than 35,000 historic newspaper editions spanning approximately 500 years of print journalism history.


• The new director of Broadcast Operations, Vija Udenans, has joined the staff from ABC News, where she was director of broadcast operations for the DC bureau and White House producer. She has won numerous awards.

The meeting ended with applause as Club member Ron Baygents told Bjerga: “You’re doing a great job, buddy, growing the Club in the right direction.”

The Club’s annual membership meeting was set for Friday, Jan. 21, 2011.

-- Myron Belkind, Club secretary, [email protected]