What's In A Name? The Debate Behind the SPJ Name Change

The fight for an amended preposition and noun will trudge on for one more year.
For the fourth time, a proposed name change from the Society of Professional Journalists to the Society of Professional Journalism, an idea spearheaded by SPJ Region 3 Director Michael Koretzky, failed during the SPJ Closing Business Session at Excellence in Journalism 2014.
A straw poll vote with the proposed amendment circulated to SPJ members via email failed 345 to 205 votes — a majority of 57 percent. Turnout was more favorable of the change since a SurveyMonkey poll launched in December returned with 498 voting against the change and 232 in favor.
Koretzky, who donned a T-shirt with the altered SPJ logo, blamed the failure on the lack of context in the straw poll question.
“it’s almost like it was written to fail,” he said. “I want this to support journalism for everyone who does it.”
Critics of the change weren’t surprised with the amendment’s outcome.
“When people see that without any of the context, they think we’re just tinkering with words,” said Andy Schlotz, SPJ Region 2 director. “If we poll our membership, we’re not polling them on a name change but on a structure change.”
Koretzky introduced the idea last year in Anaheim, but debate was short. His aim was to change the organization’s name to include all who support journalism, and ultimately grow membership. SPJ is no stranger to name changes; the 105-year-old organization was renamed in 1988 from Delta Sigma Chi to Society of Professional Journalists.
Membership has declined 22 percent since 2008.
“Part of the way we change our name is changing the way we do our membership,” Koretzky said.
A session on the name change hosted by Koretzky earlier on Saturday quickly morphed into a forum for debate.
“When I hear “Society for Professional Journalism, I’m thinking think tank in Washington, DC., not people,” said Minnesota SPJ member Sarah Bauer, “and the whole basis of this is to attract more people.”
Out of the 232 who voted in favor of the change in December’s poll, the majority were younger in age.
“The conversation doesn’t end when recruiting members with possible recruits saying ‘Well I don’t want to be a journalist.’ The conversation can continue form there with the name change so the conversation can be like, ‘Hey I don’t want to be a professional journalist, but I support journalism,” said Florida Atlantic University communication senior and SPJ Florida student member Dylan Bouscher. “It’s just a way for us to appeal to a much larger portion of the student body.”
Nonetheless, Koretzky said he would propose another amendment next year in Orlando.
“I’m really hopeful that no one is going to keep it from being submitted to this very arcane process,” he said.