MEETINGS
Let's Celebrate! Who? You!
The annual Fort Worth Bronze Quill fandango is just around the bend, with decorated Star-Telegram sports columnist Jim Reeves the keynote speaker and a ballroom full of area communicators eager for affirmation of just how sharp they are. The Bronze Quill competition is an IABC/Fort Worth tradition that recognizes outstanding work in a variety of categories. This year has a Western theme, "Fort Worth Style," and promises to be a rip-roaring good time.
Reeves has covered Fort Worth-Dallas sports for more than 40 years, 35 of them at the Star-Telegram, where he has been a columnist since 1987. He has won four first-place awards from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors and two coveted Katies. He was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 and was named Texas sports writer of the year by the National Association of Broadcasters in 1999 and by the Texas Newspaper Association in 2000.
Time & date: 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Tuesday, June 7
Place: Petroleum Club, Carter-Burgess Plaza, 777 Main St., 39th floor
Parking: $2.50 in parking garage at Seventh and Commerce streets
Cost: $30 members, $40 nonmembers, $20 students
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Getting It, Keeping It and Growing It:
Business Development Strategies for PR Practices
Whether your practice is an established business, a new business or an internal corporate function, Roslyn Dawson Thompson's lively, irreverent and fact-filled presentation at the June meeting will show how to quantify the value delivered to clients, how to expand client relationships and how to merchandise your successes.
In a two-part morning seminar, Thompson, principal at Dallas-based dawson|duncan, will explore both "getting it" -- knowing the competition, defining your niche, branding your practice, developing the value equation, traditional and nontraditional marketing for new business -- and, after a break, "keeping it and growing it" -- understanding the client's agenda (internal and external), measuring and proving value, managing organic growth and client acquisition, and developing client advocates.
Thompson founded dawson|duncan in 1986. She lectures frequently on branding and public relations, drawing on a 30-year career that includes stints as a print and broadcast journalist, university lecturer, nonprofit agency executive and entrepreneur.
Time & date: 9-11:30 a.m., noon-1 p.m. Wednesday, June 8
Place: Petroleum Club, Carter-Burgess Plaza, 777 Main St., 39th floor
Parking: free valet in parking garage at Seventh and Commerce streets
Cost: $50 members, $75 nonmembers, $30 students; seminar only $30 members, $55 nonmembers, $15 students; lunch only $20 members, $23 nonmembers, $18 students
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Strong, Aggressive Journalism: A Primer
Charles Lewis, a respected contributor to American journalism and founder of the Center for Public Integrity, will address an SPJ special dinner meeting at Cacharel in Arlington on Wednesday, June 22. Expect a look at the Newsweek/Koran gaffe, at a little corruption in high places and other topics of the age. Lewis will take questions; bring good ones.
Under Lewis' direction, the center produced 14 books and more than 250 reports on public policy issues around the world. He has had a hand in five books and is working on a sixth, tentatively titled "The End of Truth: Power, the News Media and the People's Right to Know." From 1977-88, he did investigative reporting at ABC News and at CBS News as a "60 Minutes" producer, and his stories twice received Emmy nominations.
During the 1966 presidential campaign, the center repeatedly uncovered information that resonated with millions of Americans. It broke the Lincoln Bedroom scandal, for instance, in which hundreds of campaign contributors spent the night at the Clinton White House. Four years later, the center's "The Buying of the President 2000" revealed that Enron was George W. Bush's top career patron.
In 2004, the center posted all of the major U.S. contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan online and showed that Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, and its subsidiaries had received by far the most money in contracts there. The Village Voice called Lewis "the Paul Revere of our time" in early 2003 after he obtained a copy of the Justice Department's draft legislation sequel to the U.S.A. Patriot Act and posted it on the center's web site.
Time & date: cash bar opens 6 p.m., dinner 6:30 Wednesday, June 22
Place: Cacharel, 2221 E. Lamar Blvd., Brookhollow Tower Two; from Fort Worth or Dallas, off I-30 go north on Ballpark Way, east on Lamar, look for tall building on left next to Arlington Hilton
Cost: $30
Menu: Grilled chicken breast served on a bed of basil whipped potatoes with oven-dried tomatoes and asparagus; Cacharel house salad tossed in a raspberry vinaigrette; bread, tea, coffee and, for dessert, the remarkable Cacharel chocolate soufflé
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STRAIGHT STUFF
Did you know that George Bush has a dog named Buddy, after Bill Clinton's canine? Did you know that George Bush is a truck driver? An atheist? Gay? No, not the president or his father, but dozens of people across the country who share their name. Dallas author Martha Boone Mattia interviewed these people for her book "Conversations with George Bush -- Beyond Polls and Partisanship: Real Life in the USA." Mattia will speak at the Association for Women Journalists' annual scholarship banquet Friday, June 10, at Hackberry Creek Country Club, 1901 Royal Lane, Irving. Silent auction begins at 6:30 p.m., dinner at 7:30. Also, AWJ will recognize four college scholarship winners of the Vivian Castleberry Award. Tickets are $40 each or $300 for a table of eight. Reservations must be made by June 4; send a check made out to AWJ to P.O. Box 2199, Fort Worth 76113. Vegetarian meals are available. ...
Publisher Ed Avis will pay two trustworthy people $100 each per day to run his Marion Street Press book sale June 15-18 at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists gathering in Fort Worth. The work is not difficult, Avis reports, and his representatives need to be friendly, never flustered during busy periods and maybe speak Spanish (not a necessity). The most exhausting day is the last day, when the leftover books need to be packed up and prepared for shipping. E- edavis@marionstreetpress.com. Convention organizers expect more than 2,000 journalists and media types. Info at nahj.org. ...
