This summer, ASJA members have a prime opportunity to gather in the heart of our nation’s capital as ASJA hosts its first-ever Washington, D.C. conference. The one-day conference on Aug. 28 will be at the National Press Club, an institution that contains the rich history of American journalism, and America, on its very walls.
The NPC was founded in 1908 primarily as a gathering place for reporters to drink and play poker. Although it had to officially stop serving alcohol during Prohibition, there was a room where members could hide their bottles. But it soon became much more than a drinking club. Through its luncheons and other events, the Club has hosted U.S. presidents and world leaders, glamorous celebrities and controversial revolutionaries. Their visits are memorialized in photographs that blanket the walls of the Club’s hallways. Even the furniture holds history. In the “Truman Lounge” is an upright piano atop which sat the beautiful 20-year-old Lauren Bacall as Harry S. Truman, then vice president, “tickled the ivories” in 1945.
Newspaper mats, collected from the earliest days of the Club, line the walls of the club’s lobby. People “cannot help but touch the indented lettering and wonder at the decades-old headlines,” writes Gilbert Klein, a professor of journalism and new media at American University and former president of the NPC, in his book on its history.
In the midst of all this history will be ASJA members, many of whom are pioneers in the fast-changing media landscape, to learn and build community. Attendees can mix and match panels from two simultaneous tracks during the conference. One focuses on specific opportunities in the D.C. area, including writing about government and politics. That panel includes editors from the Washington Post, Mother Jones and Politico Magazine. The other track focuses on tools for both beginning and experienced freelancers, including a panel featuring spokespeople from the Library of Congress and the U.S. National Library of Medicine on how to mine government research resources.
Before and after the Friday conference, attendees can see the sites. Centrally located in downtown D.C., the Club is within walking distance of Pennsylvania Avenue and the White House, the National Mall and Smithsonian museums, and countless national monuments. Right across the street from the Club sits the famed Willard Hotel, where the term “lobbyist” was coined. The Willard is probably out of the reach of most of our budgets, but ASJA has secured a fantastic discounted rate of $179 at the W Hotel, right around the corner from the Press Club. For full details, go to http://www.asjaconferences.org/asja2015dc/index.php.