The annual KCABJ Christmas party will take place at 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 16. The location will be at KCABJ Treasurer Lewis Diuguid's house at 12825 Oakmont Drive in south Kansas City. More details will be provided via e-mail on how to get there. The party will go until 2 a.m. It's going to be as much fun as the most enjoyable parties of our past. KCABJ member Tanyanika Samuels will coordinate who will bring what refreshments for the party. But count on food, drinks, music and dancing. Look for more news of the party in the next e-mail updates sent to members. KCABJ will spring for some of the costs. Members can bring a friend/prospective member.

One definite feature of the party/meeting will be the election of officers for 2001. The executive board positions that are up for renewal are president, vice president/broadcast, vice president/print, secretary and treasurer. Those positions currently are held by KCABJ President Benita Y. Williams, a reporter for The Kansas City Star, who stepped into the KCABJ job in 1999 to fill the unexpired term of Christi Gipson. Christi left journalism to take a job selling real estate.

Vice President/Broadcast Natalie Moultrie, a morning anchor for KMBC-TV, Channel 9, stepped into the KCABJ executive board spot to fill the unexpired term this year of Byron Buckner. Byron resigned citing personal reasons.

Vice President/Print Erica Wood, a reporter for The Kansas City Star, was elected to the KCABJ post last year. Secretary Crystal Y. Lumpkins, who works in public relations at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, was elected last year, and Treasurer Lewis Diuguid, vice president for community resources at The Kansas City Star, has served in that KCABJ post through most of the 1990s.

Each seat has a one-year term. People interested in serving in any of the open posts should get in touch with Benita at (816) 234-5908. The officers for 2001 will provide the leadership during KCABJ's 20th anniversary. A number of activities will take place including the urban student workshop at Rockhurst University, a black journalists film festival during Black History Month, a media access forum in the spring and the 10th Annual KCABJ Media Awards Ceremony. A banquet is being planned for that event, too.

The membership at the November meeting evaluated the 9th Annual KCABJ Media Awards Ceremony and deemed it to have been a great success. About 110 people paid to attend the banquet to see the organization hand out 22 awards. It was only the third banquet KCABJ has held in its 19-year history.

Members said they liked the fact that the money KCABJ spent on the banquet had a multiplier effect in the black community. KCABJ paid the Peach Tree Restaurant -- a black business -- to cater the meal, and the event was held at the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center in an African-American neighborhood.

KCABJ member Pete Wilkerson, a cameraman at KCTV-5, provided tapes of the student newscast to the graduates of the 2000 Urban Journalism Workshop. Amie Hudspeth, with KSHB-TV, Channel 41, said her station would volunteer to have the students in the urban journalism workshop do their TV newscast in Channel 41's studios. The Star published the KCABJ Journal 2000. KCABJ member Malicia El-Amin did a wonderful job of putting all of the students stories and artwork into the publication. If you haven't seen a copy call Lewis at (816) 234-4723 or KCABJ member Glenn Rice at (816) 234-4789. KCABJ donated four books by black journalists and about black people and copies of the Journal to the Lucile Bluford Library. All of the entries in the media awards contest are being kept at the Black Arvhives of Mid-America Inc., where they're being stored with the other print, audio and videotape entries dating back to 1990. The material comprises the KCABJ Media Resource Center, featuring published articles and videotaped broadcast stories of African Americans and other people of color of the 20th century.

Financially, the banquet enabled KCABJ to cover its costs, provide for this year's scholarships and generate $283.21 toward scholarships for 2001. In comparison, the banquet for 1998, the last one that KCABJ held, only cleared $75.70 after scholarships and expenses.

Members at the November meeting agreed that ticket sales for the 2001 banquet will have to start earlier and sales efforts will have to be more aggressive. Members also said they wanted to push for more publicity and make sure next year's date does not conflict with other big calendar events to ensure greater participation from other Kansas City area groups. This year's banquet was on the same date as a Black Chamber of Commerce event at Bartle Hall and a step show that greek organizations held.

Benita said the 2001 banquet could include a celebrity roast to help spur ticket sales. Stay tuned.

Benita also told the membership in a president's report that a KCABJ community forum would take place in 2001. Two possible meeting locations would be the University of Missouri-Kansas City or KSHB-TV, Channel 41. Each wants to partner with KCABJ to help people in the community learn how they can get information in the media.

Benita also said KCABJ has to complete a chapter audit for NABJ by the end of the year. It would include a membership list, an accounting of how a $1,000 NABJ grant for the student workshop was spent, a list of KCABJ officers for 2000, membership criteria, a chapter budget for 2001, fund-raising goals, KCABJ's Web site address, the president's photograph, the chapter constitution and bylaws, and chapter committees and task forces.

Jobs and More

The National Association of Black Journalists is holding a 25th anniversary reception gala at the Philadelphia Downtown Marriott. The event will take place at 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 9. It's a benefit for the NABJ Endowment Fund and the Philadelphia Scholarship Fund. Tickets range from $150 to $75.

The Maynard Institute for Journalism Education will hold a Cross-Media Journalism Program for Broadcast, Print and the Internet. It will take place March 10-17, 2001, at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Journalism in Los Angeles. People will be taught to write, report and produce stories for print, broadcast and the Web. For more information call (510) 891-9202.

Maynard applications also are out for the Editing Program, which runs from May 29-July 6, 2001 at the University of California-Berkeley, and the Maynard Management Training Center, which runs from July 22-Aug. 25, at the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

The Knight Center's seminars for 2001 will include The ABC's of Business (Feb. 18-23); Crime and Punishment (April 22-27); the Human Genome: So Now What? (June 10-15); the New Workplace (Sept. 9-14); Electricity: Deconstructing Deregulation (Oct. 21-24); and Editorial Writers Seminar (Decl 5-7, 2001). For more information call (301) 985-7279.

The Freedom Forum Institute for Newsroom Diversity will build and finance a new, three-story, 32,000-square-foot facility on the Vanderbilt University campus. It will house a newspaper journalism training center. It is expected to annually provide training for about 80 journalists of color from nontraditional backgrounds for newsroom jobs. The work will include 12-week intensive sessions on the basics of print journalism. Applicants will not need to have newspaper experience to apply. Graduates will be guaranteed professional jobs in the newspaper industry. The $6 million building will be completed in the fall of 2001.

The effort is geared toward the industry meeting its new deadline of 2025 to have the percentage of journalists of color in newsrooms throughout the country be at parity with the people of color in the United States. Currently only a little more than 11 percent of the newsroom jobs in America are held by journalists of color compared to about 30 percent of the populaton consisting of minorities.

The number of African-American journalists actually declined for the first time last year. The American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1978 (when only 4 percent of the professional jobs in journalism were held by people of color) had set the parity goal for 2000 but last year moved the mark back when it was clear that the goal would not be met. The construction of the Freedom Forum Institute facility at theVanderbilt campus represents a new, stronger commitment toward newsroom diversity.

KC People

KCABJ member Patricia Hardin held a going-away party for KCABJ member Rochelle Bishop. The women are Howard University graduates and co-workers on the copy desk of The Kansas City Star. Rochelle is leaving Kansas City to take a job as news editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, a sister Knight Ridder newspaper.

Time to Renew

KCABJ membership runs from January to January regardless of when you paid your dues. It's time to renew. The $20 membership dues has not changed since 1981 when the organization officially started. The money is used to help finance KCABJ programs for the year. Enclosed is the application form.

Mail this application with your $20 check to cover your annual membership dues. It entitles you to receive the KCABJ monthly newsletter and monthly meeting notices.

KCABJ and/or NABJ member
(circle one or both)

(Membership in KCABJ runs from January through December. Annual dues of $20 in the organization has not changed since 1981. It is the lowest of any of the affiliates of the National Association of Black Journalists. It entitles you to discounts with NABJ particularly during the annual convention, which in the summer of 2001 will be in Orlando, Fla., at Disney World)

KCABJ, P.O. Box 32744, Kansas City, Mo. 64111