The perks of professional journalism

Since I've started writing this blog, I'm beginning to feel like I'm back in journalism. I'm having fun with it (obviously), and it's a good outlet for my vents and thoughts. So I thought I'd see about renewing my lapsed membership in a professional organization called Society of Professional Journalists.

And I see there now are perks to being a journalist I hadn't realized, the perk, for instance, for someone shacking up with a journalist or a journalism educator.

I was perusing the information on the SPJ dues page to determine how much it would cost to renew my lapsed professional membership: $72. However, if I were to join and someone or another were to shack up with me, their dues would be half that:

Household
You share living quarters with an existing SPJ professional member. $36 for 1 year.

Alas, there is no discount if you're shacking up with a retired member. It has to be a working member. Or an educator. You get the discount if you shack up with a journalism teacher. Who's paid their dues, of course.

I let my membership lapse in 1988 as my protest when the organization executives changed the name of the organization from "Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi" or "SPJ/SDX" on second reference, to "Society of Professional Journalists" or just "SPJ" on second reference.

The organization was founded in 1909 as Sigma Delta Chi, an honorary journalism fraternity at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. "Fraternity" means brotherhood, meaning it was a male bastion until 1969 when its first female members were admitted. Its purpose is to foster ethics, professionalism and scholarship in the field of journalism, and members voluntarily agree to follow a Code of Ethics. Now it's not like there's any punishment if you break the code, e.g. you present a story on the President of the country using forged documents or your faculty adviser rewrites student entries to win a national journalism contest. It's a voluntary thing.

There was history in the name Sigma Delta Chi. When I finally received my bachelor's degree in 1981 I was so proud of my affiliation with the organization I had the greek letters inscribed on the stone of my college ring. I had rebuffed the elitism of social fraternities but embraced the academic and professional organizations, including Sigma Delta Chi and Phi Beta Kappa.

(Just to set the record straight I was a member of Sigma Delta Chi; I was not a member of Phi Beta Kappa. You may think so from the wit and wisdom contained in these posts but it's just not the case. And if my insightful commentary led you to think that, I humbly apologize.)

But 79 years later someone decided that an organization with a "fraternity" history, though honorary, was too chauvinistic and with one stroke of the pen eliminated Sigma Delta Chi from the name entirely.

It was a death of a thousand cuts. The organization that began as "Sigma Delta Chi," over the years became "Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi" in 1973 and then finally "Society of Professional Journalists" in 1988. I like tradition. And the name was doing no harm to anyone. It was more than a political correctness infestation over time; it was as if someone had taken Roundup to the ivy on the walls of the organization. So I let my membership lapse.

If I don't join this time, it'll be because of the $72, which is kind of a whomping big figure, not the petty political correctness. But I'll remember nonetheless what organizational executives can be capable of given a little power.

I'm just glad the leaders of that honorary academic fraternity haven't changed the name of Phi Beta Kappa to "Society of Really Smart People." But then again, it's a society of really smart people.

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