By Kiersten Riedford, DePaul SPJ president

On Sept. 30, I attended an SPJ chapter leader roundtable to connect with chapter presidents, both collegiate and regional, to see how DePaul SPJ can improve itself in the coming months. 

The insight I received from multiple members of the journalism and SPJ community was above and beyond my expectations and are now inspirations that DePaul SPJ will be utilizing this year and in the future. 

Upon speaking with leaders from SPJ chapter of the year winners, Ohio University SPJ, as well as presidents and leaders from the University of Missouri, the University of Georgia, Jacksonville State University and Ball State University, DePaul SPJ will be changing drastically over the coming months.  

With these leaders, I discussed what our chapter can do to increase membership and better retention, get members to pay less or nothing through the ACP newsroom membership program, create programs that will be helpful to all students and not just journalism students, and create fundraising programs that will help our chapter thrive. 

As of now, DePaul SPJ will be implementing:

• Use of GroupMe to talk with members directly. Here is the link to join: https://groupme.com/join_group/96969643/XkC5Zl8C. This link will be shared in the monthly newsletter as long as in weekly emails to members and prospective members. 
• The monthly DePaul SPJ newsletter will be sent via Substack on DeHUB so members and prospective members can receive the newsletter without it going to their spam mail. 
• Weekly emails will be sent to members and prospective members via DeHUB to remind students of events or opportunities to be involved with DePaul SPJ. 
• The president will be asking professors to give students extra credit for attending DePaul SPJ events. 
• The president will conduct monthly one-on-one in-person meetings with each board member to assess goals and achievements for or from the quarter or year.

Over the coming months, these are some changes that the DePaul SPJ board will be discussing before implementing: 

• Hosting fundraising events (tabling in Student Center with cider and donuts, non-journalism night outs with fee for entrance/attendance, t-shirt or tote bag sales, bingo nights where staff/faculty/alumni/students can buy cards to play with and use however many they pay for)
• Hosting more interactive events (breaking news simulations, journalism speed dating to get to know other journalists, news organizations tabling at events so students can be in direct contact with hiring/recruiting personnel)
• Creating committees for social media and event coordination
• Creating liaison positions for freshmen and sophomores who would like to be on committees or in board positions

We are anticipating DePaul SPJ to change for the better over the coming months and we are excited to go on this new journey. 

If you have suggestions or questions for how SPJ will run as of Oct 1, 2023, please send them to spjonadepaul@gmail.com.