NASW President Robert Lee Hotz provides a members-only update on recent NASW activities.
While the board discussion has been muted of late, the business of NASW has been buzzing along, as the recent spate of recent Announce messages about the Author's Coalition survey, the internship fair and the Van Dam fellows all indicate. Let me tell about some of the other things that have been going on behind the scenes at NASW lately.
-- The World Federation of Science Journalists, which meets in Melbourne, Australia, this spring, sought the benefit or our experience in building this ambitious international science writers' organization. After consulting with our international liaison Deborah Blum, who is also on the program committee of the World Federation, I have asked board member Robin Henig to answer their call for a NASW consultant's help. She will attend the World Federation meeting at their expense.
-- In response to a request relayed by Jeff Grabmeier of our Education Committee, the officers agreed to help fund a summer internship at Science for minority journalists. NASW will donate $5,000 for the internship from Author's Coalition funds.
-- Workshop chair and vice president Mariette DiChristina, working with workshop organizer Tinsley Davis & CASW workshop New Horizons organizer Paul Raeburn, has put together a promotional card for the next annual Science in Society meeting in Spokane. They are arranging to distribute 3,000 of them at the annual AAAS meeting and at the World Congress meeting in Melbourne.
-- A special subcommittee of the Internet Committee, chaired by our knowledgeable and endlessly patient volunteer Richard Robinson, spent the holidays trying to arrive at new policies and procedures to govern our listservs. As you all know too well, this is a perennially contentious topic. The subcommittee has been at it for weeks. The Internet committee chairs and I hope to hear their recommendations by the end of the month.
-- Dan Ferber and the freelance committee, surely the most energetic and dedicated group in our professional aviary, is putting the finishing touches on the long-awaited market database, which our NASW cybrarian Russ Clemings has programmed for us. The committee has doing its own experimental beta-testing of the new data base all month. The feedback is very encouraging.
It goes without saying that our able executive director, the peerless Diane McGurgan, has been keeping our organization on a steady course by dealing deftly with the countless daily requests and chores that beset such a very large and, may I now say proudly, increasingly active organization.
Which is another way of saying how much our members have come to depend now on you, our active and energetic board members. I don't know what we would all do without each other.
