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Nat'l Parks, Arts are Synergistic, Wolf Trap CEO Says
Still-popular 60s folk singer Judy Collins was a no-show due to illness at Monday’s Luncheon spotlighting Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts' upcoming summer season. There were murmurs of disappointment from her fans in the audience. Collins has been a frequent performer at Wolf Trap over the years, but speaker and CEO Terrence Jones got laughs from the audience when he promised not to sing. Jones, in his ninth annual appearance at the Club, recently returned from a three-month solo trek fact-finding trip, taking a close-up look at 86 national parks— “18,500 miles across 32…
Type: News
Panelists Describe Down Side to Unfettered Comments on Papers' Web Sites
Grand Rapids Release GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – News organizations encourage readers and viewers to comment on stories as a way to allow them to participate in the news. But some of those comments create dilemmas for editors, leading Grand Rapids journalists told an NPC forum Thursday. “There are comments on our site that make my skin crawl,” said Tim Geraghty, vice president and news director of WZZM-13. “But we believe we cannot be advocates of the First Amendment and yet stifle free speech.” He said certain things are taken off – racist comments, expletives, identifying a juvenile involved in…
Type: News
Kudos to IRE Winners Keith Epstein and James Bamford
Two Club members won prizes in the annual contest sponsored by Investigative Reporters and Editors. Keith Epstein and four colleagues of BusinessWeek won the magazine/specialty publication contest for "Cyber-War." IRE said: "More frightening to read than a modern techno-thriller novel, BusinessWeek's real-life series of stories on the growing cyber-war between East and West rivets the reader with dozens of breaches in American security networks. The writers pieced together seemingly unconnected online security problems at several federal departments to reveal a wide-scale problem. Working at…
Type: News
Club Commends House for Passing Reporters' Shield Bill
The National Press Club commends the House for passing legislation that would protect reporters from having to reveal their anonymous sources to government officials, except under extraordinary circumstances. The Club urges the Senate to pass this legislation, so President Obama can then sign it into law. "It is past time that reporters have a national shield against government attempts to learn the identities of anonymous sources," said NPC President Donna Leinwand, a reporter with USA Today. "Unless reporters can withhold the names of sources on occasion, the press cannot do its job as well…
Type: News
Dropout Rate No Joke, Alma Powell Tells Luncheon
Even though she was speaking on April Fools Day, Alma Powell, chairwoman of the America’s Promise Alliance, told a luncheon April 1 that, as a nation, “we for too long have been fooling ourselves” about the alarming high-school dropout rate. “About one-third of our children drop out of school every year,” she said. “Before the end of today, 7,000 kids will have dropped out – one every 26 seconds.” Calling the crisis an “economic issue” that is eating away at the United States’ ability to compete in a global economy, she said that the nation “cannot have a future unless our children are well-…
Type: News
Bond Calls on Obama to Implement Counterinsurgency Plan in Afghanistan
President Obama’s approach to Afghanistan should mirror the counterinsurgency effort that the Bush administration used over the past couple years in Iraq, according to a leading Republican senator on foreign policy matters. “The strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that President Obama unveiled last week is an encouraging start to addressing the many complex problems that plague the region,” said Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, at an April 1 Newsmaker. “The reason my optimism is guarded is because the president has 'split the baby’ between…
Type: News
Debate Consortium Encourages Federal Funding
Jeff Porro and John Davis, co-founders of the Debate Consortium to encourage and fund debate teams from historically black colleges and universities, called on Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the White House to provide federal money to restore thedebate tradition of these schools. They spoke at a March 27 Newsmaker panel. Porro is a speech writer and story writer for "The Great Debaters," the Denzel Washington film that won critical acclaim and a Screenwriters' Guild Award for Porro. The story chronicles Wiley College in the Jim Crow south and young James Farmer who took on Ivy League…
Type: News
Social Media Helps Shine Light into Congress, Panelists Say
The job description of a Congressman: Write laws. Twitter. Debate. Appear in public. Campaign. Check Facebook. And, if you are Rep. John Culberson of Texas, make time to do a telephone conference call, online town hall meeting, check text messages and, if you're really old-fashioned, check your e-mail. Simultaneously. "Whether we like it or not, the electronic information superhighway will force us all to change," he said Friday during a panel discussion about social media at the National Press Club. "It's not survival; it's evolution." Social media is an invaluable tool to lighten up the…
Type: News
Rotary President Describes Polio Fight
The president of Rotary International told a March 30 Newsmaker that despite the current "economic climate," his worldwide organization has raised $75 million -- one-third of its $200 million goal -- for global polio eradication. RI has 1.2 million members in 33,000 clubs in more than 200 countries. Dong Kurn Lee, chairman of the Bubang manufacturing companies of South Korea and a former trustee of the Bank of Seoul, said the $200 million will match a $355 million challenge grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for a total of $555 million to be used for eliminating the crippling…
Type: News
Comedy Night Brings Laughter Amid Layoffs
Journalists-turned-comics brought comedy to tough times in a packed ballroom Friday night as the first-ever "Commedia dell Media" came off as a roaring success. Emcee and longtime club member Bob Madigan, along with Scott Lanman, Matt Cooper and others entertained more than 350 people with jokes that were timely as well as funny. "You know, your friends try to help you when they learn that you've lost your job. They say stuff like, 'When one door closes another one opens," said Mike Walter, a former news anchor at WUSA-9 in Washington. "It should go like this: When one door closes, another…
Type: News