By Brock Weir
The 80-year-old National Press Club is now at a crossroads as it prepares to declare bankruptcy in the near future and re-emerge as a charitable foundation.
The National Press Club’s transition committee plans to re-tool the club– which has been a social club and speakers’ forum for Ottawa’s media and political communities– into a foundation that is more inclusive of the wider community.
“This is not just the Parliamentary Press Gallery’s hangout,” says Tim Kane, chairman of the club’s transition committee. “This is the place that all journalists and all people who are interested in media issues… can feel at home.”
He says that while the application for charitable status is ready to go, they are still hammering out the foundation’s new constitution, which needs to be attached to it. Kane says getting charitable status will help increase revenue as donations can be tax-deductible.
But right now there is no particular timeline in place to establish the new foundation, he says.
“We don’t want to trip ourselves up, so we’re taking it in a staged way, and as we jump one hurdle, we’ll be ready to face the next one.”
The National Press Club has been facing declining revenue and membership for years. For some members, the club’s relevancy and its perceived image as a drinking club have long been issues.
“It looks like a 1970s rec room down there,” says Susan Delacourt, Ottawa bureau chief for the Toronto Star.
“All that’s missing is shag carpeting and beanbag chairs. It’s not a very welcoming place to go,” she adds.
Gord McIntosh, a long-time member and former president of the club, says changing their existing business model is overdue.
“If you’re going to solicit people’s support, then a social club, a drinking hole, isn’t enough,” he says. “Who the hell wants to belong to a club where all you do is go there after work, drink several beers and bitch and complain about your publisher?”
Finding new blood and reaching out to members of new media, such as bloggers, will be keys to the new foundation’s future, says Kane.
“It’s not just the traditional newspaper people by any means,” he says.
The new foundation will also focus on reaching out to budding journalists across the country.
“We’re going to make them aware right from high school on of the contributions that the press club is making to Canadian journalism and to business communications in general,” says Kane.
One of the ways the foundation plans to increase awareness in high schools is by holding national contests where one regularly published school paper would be named “high-school paper of the year.”
The foundation also plans to provide mentorship programs between senior-member journalists and journalism students, as well as “really cheap” student membership rates.
But if mentorship programs and cheap student rates aren’t enough to increase youth membership, the foundation committee is working on fostering a more youthful image.
“You’re going to see events at the club that will have a more youthful theme, bands and stuff like that, that will be attractive to younger people,” Kane says. “We hope that in the future we’ll have some of our newsmaker breakfasts with a more youthful flair to them.”
McIntosh says he’s looking forward to hearing more about the foundation committee’s plans at the press club’s annual general meeting on March 31.
While he says events the club already hold, such as seminars with newsmakers and awards presentations, add relevancy to the group, he believes plans for mentorship and scholarship programs “are the way to go.”
“I’d like to meet more people from Carleton and Algonquin College who are going into the trade,” he says.
Maria McClintock, a former journalist with Sun Media who served as the club’s vice-president from 2002-2003, says while she thinks the plans are a great idea, she hopes that the foundation will be inclusive to everyone.
“[I hope that] if the club wants to go down this road they will fill a niche that will provide all these wonderful services, not only to young journalists but also to veteran journalists, so that it’s relevant to everybody, not just a certain segment,” she says.