President's Column

By Robert Griswold

One of the most important goals I set as the President of the San Diego Press Club was to build on our solid membership base. For years, we have been proud to say that we have the largest membership of any press club in the country behind the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

However, we did see an erosion in our robust membership numbers in the first few years of this decade and your Press Club Board and Club Manager have worked diligently to rebuild the confidence you show in us through your membership. I am proud to report that with great events and solid leadership, we are on a roll and have over 360 members and are honing in on my goal of 400 members. I am especially proud to tell you that we have dramatically increased the number of active media members with 40 recently joining the club. While all members are important, our active media members are so critical to our overall success.

Speaking of success . . . Terry Williams informed the Board at our latest meeting that we have 1,135 entries for our Journalism Awards competition. This is an all-time record. So when you bring home first place or another award, you will have personal satisfaction of knowing that you competed against the best and your award will really mean something.

We also have an amazing evening planned for the J-Awards that you won't want to miss. No sit down, rubber-chicken, black-hole-for-time event for us! This will be a fun event with constant action! Make your reservations early as only the first 400 will join us.

And our continued success is bright with the great slate of board nominees. Have you seen the ballot? It is really tough to narrow your choices to just the top five. But we still have plenty of opportunities for you to get involved as we have several committees that would welcome your participation.

As always, I welcome your ideas and suggestions to make the San Diego Press Club even better. With four children from 12 to 18 (two boys and two girls), I never sleep, so feel free to call me on my cell phone at (619) 719-7761 with those brilliant thoughts!

Posted Sept. 2006