Thursday, October 17, 2002 9:52 PM
An enthusiastic crowd at the 2002 Annual Membership Meeting in Holl y w ood on Sept. 19 heard President Patt Morrison compare the difficult past year for the nation to the challenging year that the L.A. Press Club has experienced. “It’s been a year where the nation has found the bar set very high in many things, and in many things it has met the challenge,” said Morrison. “And I believe the Press Club has done the same, doubling and redoubling efforts on behalf of journalists in every medium.”
Morrison in particular singled out the success of Karen Ocamb, Ana Garcia and the other members of the Sunshine Coalition, which made significant progress this past year and has even more ambitious plans for the future. “At a time when American values of free speech and democracy have been so sharply contrasted to terrorists and totalitarians, the Press Club has waged its own battle to keep open government just that — open! It’s astonishing to think that since Sept. 11 the issue would have to be pressed, on established law like the Brown Act and the California Public Records Act, but it does.”
Ocamb later announced during a presentation on the Sunshine Coalition’s efforts that it would not only continue working to open up L.A. County government, where significant progress has been made, but next will be looking to do the same in the City of L.A.,the L.A. unified school district and elsewhere.
Morrison also had praise for this year’s journalism awards competition, which drew a record amount of income from entries, and produced an event in June which was an artistic and commercial success. She also took note of the creation of the Daniel Pearl Award For Courage and Integrity in Journalism. “The kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl served at enormous cost to remind the world, as it did us, that this profession of ours matters,” said Morrison. “And that we who practice it find it important enough to risk ourselves in the line of our duty.” Morrison also singled out for praise James Foy, who has announced that he will retire from the board after this year, for his long service to the club. In particular, she praised him for reorganizing the financial record-keeping this year, helping move the club into new offices and for launching a successful revised corporate membership program.
She also praised outreach efforts led by Ocamb, the improvements of the club web site under webmaster Tony Kinkela, the many contributions of former office manager Marnye Oppenheim and many informational seminars put on by the club this year.
Morrison introduced Becky Rivkin, the club’s new Associate Director, who has taken on many of the duties formerly handled by Oppenheim.
In particular, Morrison said that the club’s International Caucus of Journalists has done an outstanding job with a series of informational “Opening The Door” seminars, by bringing in many new members and adding international diversity to the membership.
Morrison announced that next year the club will join with PEN USA to undertake a series of seminars called “Freedom to Write,” about free speech and First Amendment issues faced by writers and journalists.
The plans to make the club a non-profit are moving along, said Morrison, adding that an application has been made to the IRS for a “status which is in keeping with the work we do and the reason we do it.”
Noting the evolution of the Press Club from a mostly social organization to one oriented toward service to journalists and the community, Morrison added: “I invoke the words of someone who was half A m e rican and a pretty fair writer, Winston Churchill, who said of his country’s struggles what we can say of our own — We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.”
“To these goals,” concluded Morrison, “we who practice and believe in good journalism will continue to inspire as we survive, and to that task the Press Club has put its unswerving commitment.”
