Who’s ready for the election to be over? It feels like a long political season is finally drawing to a close. Let’s not forget the key role journalists played during this (and every) election, fact checking and delivering information about the candidates and issues to the public. So thanks to all you out there in the trenches making sure everyone has what they need to make an intelligent vote, and thanks to all you readers/watchers/listeners for staying informed.

Save the date.

Our first Fireside Chat of the season at the Denver Press Club, 1330 Glenarm Place, is set for 6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14. The format is simple. We get a Colorado journalist to talk about what they do, answer questions and have a conversation about the issues of the day.

November’s host is award-winning journalist Kevin Vaughan – a longtime Colorado newspaper man. Vaughan, recent City Editor for the Denver Post, is an author and currently a senior reporter at the Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network. During a career spanning more than 25 years, he has written for the Fort Morgan Times, the Fort Collins Coloradoan, the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post, covering some of the state’s biggest stories — including the tragedy at Columbine High School, Colorado’s horrific wildfire season of 2002, the Colorado Rockies’ 2007 playoff run and World Series appearance, and the fight by Tim Masters to overturn his conviction in the murder of Peggy Hettrick. He is a 1986 graduate of Metropolitan State College, and his work has been honored regionally and nationally. His 2007 Rocky Mountain News series, “The Crossing,” which examined the lifelong reverberations of Colorado’s worst traffic accident, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing. He is the co-author (with Jim Davidson) of the best-seller “The Ledge: An Adventure Story of Friendship and Survival on Mount Rainier” — published in 2011 by Ballantine Books.

We hope to see you all there ‑ it’s free and open to everyone.

SAVE THE DATE 2

The Colorado Pro chapter will have its Holiday Party at the Denver Press Club at 6 p.m., Friday Dec. 14. Plan to come and do some power networking and learn about the benefits of being an SPJ member if you’re not. Ask any board member for their “elevator speech.”

Board activity

Your board has been hard at work: We finalized an Advocacy Policy that will help us respond to pressing journalism issues involving open records, open meetings or censorship. When it happens, we’ll report it and take a stand defending the rights of the free press, including alerts to our members and press releases to media organizations to get the word out.

We’re also finalizing our 2012 Top of the Rockies contest. We’re looking at all the categories and making sure we have the most competitive, and fair, journalism contest possible. If you have any ideas, suggestions or want to provide feedback to our contest chair Nic Garcia, please email contest@spjcolorado.com. Our entry period will open soon and details will follow.

 

Scholarships

The Colorado Pro chapter is pleased to announce we have up to $4,000 in scholarships available to freshmen, sophomores, juniors or seniors from Colorado who are studying print or broadcast journalism at any U.S. college or university. We have one print journalism scholarship and one broadcast journalism scholarship available. Please visit our website www.spjcolorado.com for full details, application instructions and a down-loadable .pdf flyer so you can help us spread to the word!

 

New emails

We’re pleased to announce we now have official emails we’re using for key officer positions. So if you’d like to reach President Dennis Huspeni, use president@spjcolorado.com, or Treasurer David Milstead, use treasurer@spjcolorado.com. Of course you can continue to use our general email, news@spjcolorado.com.

If you prefer snail mail: P.O. Box 100201, Denver, CO, 80250.

Please reach out if you have any programming ideas, want to help volunteer to judge contest entries or anything else. This is YOUR chapter, so help us make it the best it can be. Thank you for reading this issue of the SPJ Colorado Newsletter.

We encourage you to forward this to friends and colleagues!

Please feel free to contact me with our email news@spjcolorado.com, president@spjcolorado.com or denmanh@aol.com with feedback about this newsletter and other chapter communication efforts or if you have something you would like to submit to this publication. Also, add the email to your contacts, so it won’t hit your spam box.

Dennis Huspeni

President/Communications chair

SPJ Colorado Pro