Yesterday after lunch, the EC and the board got this in their email boxes...
To the members of the SPJ executive committee:
I write on behalf of the executive board of the Press Club of Long Island, the local SPJ professional chapter for Nassau and Suffolk counties in New York, to ask you to reconsider and reverse your decision to suspend the LDF auction this year and your decision to instead hold an auction for the Terry Harper Fund.
We recommend that you do hold the LDF auction as usual, and dedicate the auction in the memory of Terry Harper. We believe that dedication would demonstrate SPJ's belief that Terry Harper would be supportive of continuing to use Legal Defense Fund revenue for the legal defense of reporters.
To that end we support and join with our neighbor, the SPJ's Deadline Club, and support all the views and recommendations expressed in its letter to you, copied below. We join them in objecting to the fact, manner and consequences of your decision to suspend the LDF auction.
We would actively support a separate effort to raise money for the Terry Harper Memorial Fund.
John C. O'Connell
President
Press Club of Long Island
As usual, at least in my short tenure on the board, there was no debate among all the recipients, although I replied to John privately — as I always do when any email is sent to the entire board. We had a nice chat. We don't even agree on everything, but here's how I see it: If dues-paying members are willing to take time out of their busy and increasingly stressful lives to say anything positive or negative about SPJ, then the people who temporarily run the place are karmically obligated to reply.
But maybe that's just me.
