Brick

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Sun­day, July 11, 2010 — Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity feels big­ger than my hometown’s Uni­ver­sity of Arkansas. Yep, 1,933 acres ver­sus 345 acres. It has a jour­nal­ism school not a depart­ment, a music school not a depart­ment. It is a hand­some forested cam­pus, full of sculp­tures (even a huge Calder) and foun­tains. Come Octo­ber it must be something.

The 2010 con­fer­ence of the National Soci­ety of News­pa­per Colum­nists ended with the annual gen­eral mem­ber­ship meet­ing. It had the usual agenda — the exec­u­tive direc­tor reviews num­bers from the bud­get (hold­ing the course), of mem­bers (only slightly down), of con­test entries (up a bit) — plus com­mit­tee reports and (drum roll) elec­tion of officers.

Views and details on the con­fer­ence are linked at a spe­cial page in Columnists.com. No one prob­a­bly will write up the busi­ness ses­sion. Still, the page is being updated as new blogs and columns come in, and will be archived indefinitely.

NSNC Oath of Office, Sun­day, July 11, 2010. Photo by Bon­nie Squires

With no nom­i­na­tions from the floor, we elect a slate, con­fer­ence chair, sec­re­tary, vice pres­i­dent and pres­i­dent. The last job on that list now is mine through sum­mer 2012. I claimed all week­end that I’d vote for any write-in can­di­date, seri­ous if they were, but none offered.

Now I start plead­ing for impeach­ment. The self-deprecation is get­ting old, but I did not seek this job. Help­ing the NSNC as a board mem­ber for five years has been a blast. But it has had a few res­ig­na­tions, due directly and indi­rectly to the Good Depres­sion, so here I was Sun­day, nei­ther “act­ing” nor “interim” but letterhead-official.

What’s unex­pected is how con­fi­dent I feel.

The mem­ber­ship meet­ing aims for 90 min­utes because peo­ple always start leav­ing for the air­port, and Pres­i­dent Saman­tha Ben­nett wrapped it up in 60, includ­ing a non-agenda dis­cus­sion on the society’s advo­cacy role. I had ready an inau­gural address, about what I said at the Thurs­day board meet­ing, but I scut­tled that in favor of writ­ing it up for the NSNC newslet­ter. I’ll post it as a Brick, too. But I did orga­nize a mock Oath of Office, per­haps to join the Sit­ting Duck and Mys­tic Tie traditions.

NSNC Edu­ca­tion Foun­da­tion Sec­re­tary Dave Lieber admin­is­tered the oath. First lady Christy Pol­lock held an Ernie Pyle vol­ume, on which I placed my left hand. In my right I hoisted a foun­tain pen. It was loaded.

I, (name), do soberly swear,
To advo­cate for the craft of columns, in the field of jour­nal­ism,
To abide by the Code of Con­duct of the National Soci­ety of News­pa­per Colum­nists,
To rep­re­sent the National Soci­ety of News­pa­per Colum­nists as (title).
How great Art –
– Buch­wald.
Thy Will –
– Rogers.
So help me, Erma and Ernie.

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