{"id":3484,"date":"2012-02-01T11:14:12","date_gmt":"2012-02-01T17:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/?p=3484"},"modified":"2012-02-01T14:27:02","modified_gmt":"2012-02-01T20:27:02","slug":"no-taking-ulysses-for-granted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2012\/02\/no-taking-ulysses-for-granted\/","title":{"rendered":"No Taking Ulysses for Granted"},"content":{"rendered":"

This column first was published as the \u201cPresident\u2019s Message\u201d in the February 2012 newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists<\/a>.<\/small><\/p>\n

Spring \u2014 OK, this is winter but I\u2019m an optimist \u2014 is busy-time for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.<\/p>\n

\u2022 We\u2019re halfway through gathering entries for the annual Column Contest<\/a>. Have you sent yours in? Bloggers: You can\u2019t win if you don\u2019t enter. Like previous years, online columns have two of the six categories. Newspaper is a proud part of our name, but newspapers these days take several formats. For the cost of two large supreme pizzas, you have a chance to be judged with your peers. If you’re one of the three finalists or, dare to hope, the winner, you earn bragging rights. Deadline is March 1, so there’s not much time.<\/p>\n

Tell you what: For 2012, we’ll throw in an extra day to get your copy in: Feb. 29.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Plans for the annual Columnists Conference are firming (detailed elsewhere in the newsletter). Like Easter and Passover, the conference is \u201cearly\u201d this year, May 3-6.<\/p>\n

For the first time in a spell, we\u2019re convening in the South, Macon, Ga. Merle Haggard just left Macon the other day, feeling better than when the music legend arrived.<\/p>\n

Expect to learn practical and current tips to improve your writing and improve the marketing of your work. Expect the informality and hijinks that other journalism and writing groups only wish they had.<\/p>\n

\"US<\/a>
He couldn't take any with him, no bill buried in Grant's Tomb.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2022 Underlying these is a call to join the NSNC. Annual membership is $50. That earns you discounts to the conference, $50 off registration for members ($100 off for nonmembers, though deducting the $50 for dues leaves …), and the contest, where the $45 fee is cut to $25. The contest fee is just 20 bucks’ different, almost half. That could add up if you enter in several categories. We allow that.<\/p>\n

If you publish in different formats and styles, you can, say, enter three columns in a print category and three others as online works (that never were published in ink), as long as they’re all different columns. If you’re a broad-range scribe you might enter three serious pieces in General Interest and three funny ones in Humor (read the rules carefully). Is the NSNC treasury getting more cash from you? Sure, but you ARE upping the odds of intriguing at least one judge.<\/p>\n

Intangibles<\/h3>\n

There’s far more to NSNC membership. You can learn about these coursing through our website, especially the page \u201cWhat Do I Get from Joining NSNC?<\/a>\u201d The NSNC is not a Sam’s Club or Costco; the value for your Grant (the president on a $50 bill) comes from the strength of belonging to a group. This is a great club. It’s proved in every article in every eColumnist newsletter and throughout columnists.com.<\/p>\n

Another intangible came to the fore, though, during the last month. That’s in the mission statement<\/a>, that the NSNC “advocates for columnists and free-press issues.”<\/p>\n

The NSNC stood up, joined others and opposed some online piracy legislation before Congress. Legislative leaders withdrew the drafts.<\/p>\n

The society’s board believed columnists, and all Americans, would see limits to First Amendment rights without substantial revision to the House bill \u201cStop Online Piracy Act,\u201d H.R. 3261, or SOPA, and the Senate version \u201cPreventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act,\u201d S.968, or PIPA.<\/p>\n

[A good summary was created by a staffer at the Poynter Institute, “What Journalists Need to Know about SOPA<\/a>.\u201d]<\/p>\n

We don’t make stances lightly. First, we’re journalists, and the only lobbying I’ve seen the best of us do is on Freedom of Information and Open Meetings issues. Second, we columnists are ornery individualists, taking pride in disagreeing with all comers.<\/p>\n

Third, we’re a small-r republican organization, the board by being elected by the general membership — a majority of members who wake up for the Sunday morning annual meeting at the conference. The board considers stances on a few issues as they come up during the year.<\/p>\n

Yet, NSNC officers reject more than they accept. Folks, your board has nice people. There\u2019s never a \u201cnay\u201d vote. That\u2019s rude, among friends. The preference I\u2019ve seen over my years as an officer is we\u2019ll talk an issue to death (group emails, actually) until the proponent withdraws the motion.<\/p>\n

On rare occasions on my own I\u2019ll just send an e-mail or a blog-comment, making clear I am speaking for myself. A few times, and with board consensus, the NSNC signs on with stands taken by fellow members of the Conference of National Journalism Organizations, journalismassociations.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Swashbuckle<\/h3>\n

On Jan. 18, prominent websites like Google led other organizations and individuals in a 24-hour “Internet Blackout” to notify Washington that SOPA \/ PIPA would cause serious harm to free speech \/free press in this electronic age. Some sites went fully dark and inoperable, except for a notice explaining why, such as wikipedia.org. Others put a black box atop the home page; that’s what was seen at google.com, and that’s what we did, explained at “Freedom of the Seas<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Checking the analytics for that day, we found that hits were dramatically high at columnists.com. Our shout-out was heard widely. Fighting piracy (on the sea or the web) takes the finesse of a Ulysses.<\/p>\n

With membership just under 300 members, the society is just big enough to be noticed and small enough where we can know one another (when you click “like” on Facebook.com\/columnists, you’ll see lots of familiar names). But I’d be fooling no one to deny that what we do (write essays of opinion, humor, anecdote, advice and reportage) carries some serious weight when we speak out as an organization.<\/p>\n

Did I say 300 members is a good size? I meant 500. Think of high school and how you knew, or knew of, most everyone. Five hundred dues-paying columnists would be a force to reckon with. Huzzah!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This column first was published as the \u201cPresident\u2019s Message\u201d in the February 2012 newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Spring \u2014 OK, this is winter but I\u2019m an optimist \u2014 is busy-time for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. \u2022 We\u2019re halfway through gathering entries for the annual Column Contest. Have you sent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-course-of-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1115,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2009\/04\/newspaper-stat-nsnc-stet\/","url_meta":{"origin":3484,"position":0},"title":"Newspaper Stat, NSNC Stet","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 18, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"There's been e-talk among the membership about renaming the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. I was for it, liked some of the proposals, but now I'm agin it. It's not that I'm sore that my suggestion, International House of Toast (nod to Bob and Ray) was ignored. We would be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2165,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/08\/newspaper-paper-or-plastic\/","url_meta":{"origin":3484,"position":1},"title":"Newspaper, Paper or Plastic","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"August 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"My first \"President's Column\" for columnists.com. Thank you for electing me president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Didn\u2019t you hear? I have not published a running column since Sept. 16, 2001. Instead I\u2019ve written at www.benpollock.com\/brick for nearly seven years. After the first year, the water warms up.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":306,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/04\/national-columnists-day\/","url_meta":{"origin":3484,"position":2},"title":"National Columnists’ Day","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 18, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"On April 18, 1945, a Japanese sniper took out Ernie Pyle during a Pacific Island skirmish. Pyle was a beloved newspaperman, whose columns were anticipated by millions of readers of hundreds of newspapers. You couldn't say that about a lot of journalists then, much less now. Most war reporting was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2303,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/11\/certifiably\/","url_meta":{"origin":3484,"position":3},"title":"Certifiably","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"First published in the November 2010 issue of the e-Columnist By Ben S. Pollock President,\u00a0National Society of Newspaper Columnists \"Politics make strange bedfellows\" goes the quote by 19th-century newspaperman Charles Dudley Warner, and this fall it's been columnists getting renown for jumping on the mattress. Columnists, commentators, news analysts, bloggers,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3095,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2011\/09\/the-room-in-the-elephant\/","url_meta":{"origin":3484,"position":4},"title":"The Room in the Elephant","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"September 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"This column first was published as the \"President's Message\" in the September 2011 newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. The board of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists has been cleaning up after the party in Detroit. While washing glasses and emptying the trash, we share the usual\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5106,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2015\/06\/ethics-panel-columnists\/","url_meta":{"origin":3484,"position":5},"title":"A Panel on Ethics for Columnists, Other Writers","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"June 30, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are links, annotated, mentioned in my portion of a Panel on Ethics at the 39th annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, in Indianapolis. These were prepared with the assumption the room would have a projector etc. Wrong. I had a Plan B -- always have a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education, Coarsely"","block_context":{"text":"Education, Coarsely","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/education-coarsely\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Ben Pollock (left) and Steve Keys, executive director of Indiana's Hoosier State Press Association, discuss ethical issues for columnists and others Friday, June 26, 2015, at the 39th annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. It met at The Alexander in Indianapolis. Photo by Dan St. Yves.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/Ben-Steve-Key-nsnc-indy-960x724-styves-062615-300x226.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3484"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3500,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3484\/revisions\/3500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}