WOODWARD AND BERNSTEIN AMONG KEYNOTE SPEAKERS AT SPJ’S MEDIAFEST

The four-day in-person conference also attracted student journalists and advisors from the College Media Association and Associated Collegiate Press

The four-day conference also attracted student journalists and advisors ......

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) partnered with two student media organizations for its annual conference, drawing heroes of the profession and nearly 2,000 attendees.

Mediafest22 was SPJ’S first inperson annual conference since 2019, held in Washington, D.C., from October 27 to 30. SPJ had about 800 registrants, said Organizer Zoë Berg. Other attendees were student journalists and advisers from the College Media Association and Associated Collegiate Press.

Keynote speakers included Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who discussed today’s political landscape, shared anecdotes from Watergate and bantered.

One reason they broke the Watergate story, they said, was simply because they showed up. Woodward said the day of the break-in, Saturday, June 17, 1972, was “one of the most beautiful days in Washington, ever.”

“And so, the editors sat around and said, ‘Who would be dumb enough to come in and work today?’ And they immediately thought of me,” he said.

He discussed “the Bernstein method” — getting reluctant sources to open up by knocking on their doors.

“The great stories are the result of putting in the time,” Bernstein said.

He said newsrooms today are busy and hectic, and too many publishers urge their reporters to produce more work without giving them the time to create deeply reported stories.

But, he contended, investigative journalism is not on the decline.

Woodward critiqued modern journalism for a decline in teamwork.

“A team of two is really ideal, particularly when you have different backgrounds. There’s an element of competition and, quite frankly, for awhile, distrust,” he said, gaining laughs from the packed auditorium. “I wondered, who is this guy? He likes rock music. He looks like he needs a haircut.”

He concluded the address with a call to action.

“For everyone here, there is a lot of work to do,” he said. “Write that on the whiteboard.”

Other notable names in journalism included the 2022 Fellows of the Society: Bill Whitaker, John Quiñones, Clarissa Ward, Roland Martin and Jerry Green.

John Quiñones said he grew up in San Antonio in a home that spoke only Spanish. Schools did not have bilingual education, and his school paddled students for speaking the only language he knew.

Quiñones was 13 when his dad was laid off from work, and they became migrant workers. He said his dad would ask him, “Do you want to do this for the rest of your life, or do you want to go to college?”

“It was a no-brainer,” Quiñones said. From an early age, Quiñones knew he wanted to be a journalist on TV, but he didn’t see TV journalists who looked like him. When he told teachers his goals, they usually suggested trade school.

An English teacher was different.

She saw his writing and asked him if he was interested in journalism. She introduced him to the leader of the school newspaper.

“There I was, writing these big, investigative stories like, ‘Why are teachers parking in student parking spaces? Tonight, we go undercover,’” he said.

He loved the job, and a few years later, he did go undercover, crossing the U.S. border from Mexico and making his way to Chicago, where he found workers who had not been paid for 17 weeks. Soon, he was hired as a Latin American correspondent. For one of his first stories, he had an interview scheduled with the president of Nicaragua, but the president canceled the interview.

Quiñones said Peter Jennings called him, and he was sure he was about to be fired.

“He said, ‘Don’t worry so much about interviewing the movers and shakers of the world,’” Quiñones recalled. “‘Interview the moved and shaken.’”

Mediafest22 sessions included overviews for journalists interested in expanding their skillsets, such as podcasting, documentary, drones, photography, consumer investigations, data journalism and creating news visuals. Students learned basic journalism skills like headline writing, interviewing, writing a Freedom of Information Act request and obituary writing.

Topical discussions included covering immigration, climate and war reporting. Speakers also confronted timely topics faced by the industry, such as “Restoring Public Trust in the News,” “Elections in a Time of Turmoil,” “Disinformation and the Decline of Democracy,” and “Amplifying New and Diverse Voices.”

The conference concluded with the SPJ President’s Awards Banquet, where outgoing President Rebecca Aquilar swore in the new President, Claire Regan.

“Journalists need SPJ now more than ever for support and solidarity,” Regan said.

She pledged to “push for initiatives that empower journalists to hold the powerful accountable.”

Ashanti Blaize-hopkins was elected SPJ’S Vice President, the first Black person elected to the position. She is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and professor at Santa Monica

College. She wrote on Twitter that “representation matters.”