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Hi everyone! I’m so excited my kid’s book I illustrated ‘Hear My Prayer’, by Lee Bennett Hopkins is finally available in stores. The stores websites have previews of what the book looks like inside. Here’s another preview of one of my favorite illustrated spreads from the book, which was a […]

Donald Ritchie, author of Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps, Our Constitution, and The Congress of the United States: A Student Companion, has been Associate Historian of the United States Senate for more than three decades. Earlier this week he sent me this blog along with the following introduction: Even though I study news rather than make it, last week I was invited to give a “newsmaker” luncheon talk at the National Press Club. The occasion was the club’s centennial, the video of that talk is online here. I thought the condensed version below would make a good blog.

Boy was he right!  Below Ritchie talks about the National Press Club and its place in history.

The National Press Club is celebrating its centennial, raising a question about why journalistic competitors feel compelled to band together. Founded in 1908, the club had many short-lived predecessors. The Washington Correspondents’ Club, for instance, held several dinners designed to reduce tensions between reporters and their political sources during the difficult days of Reconstruction. Such nineteenth-century press clubs failed because they let their members run up a tab at the bar (the National Press Club has never extended credit), and because they were either press clubs, founded by reporters for Washington, D.C., papers that excluded national correspondents, or correspondents’ clubs that barred the local press, indicating the animosity between them. The genius of the National Press Club was that it combined reporters for both the local and the national press.

But only men. The club left women and minorities outside the parameters of mainstream journalism. Not until 1955 did it hold a vote of its entire membership to admit Louis Lautier, a reporter for the National Negro Publishers Association. Radio news broadcasters were also treated as second-class citizens at first, being permitted to join the club only as non-voting members. Women reporters founded the Women’s National Press Club, but the separation prevented them from covering the National Press Club’s regular “newsmaker” luncheons.

In 1956, the men offered a compromise by inviting women to attend the luncheons, so long as they sat in the balcony and left as soon as the lunch was over. While the men dined below, the women shared the balcony with television cameras, hot lights, and coils of electrical wiring. Women reporters appealed to the famous guest speakers not to participate unless they could dine below with the men. Among the few to comply was Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, eager to publicize an American injustice. One who failed to offer solidarity was Martin Luther King, Jr., desperate to attract national press attention to the March on Washington. Dr. King spoke to an audience segregated by gender rather than race. Economic pressures on the club, whose membership declined during the 1960s, finally persuaded the men to admit women as members in 1971. Fittingly, the club’s centennial-year president is Sylvia Smith of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

Regardless of race, gender, or media, Washington correspondents have historically been caught in a creative tension between the scoop and the pack–between professional rivalries and forces that pull the competitors together. They spend much time together outside the same closed doors, riding the same campaign trains, planes, and vans, being handed the same press releases, attending the same press conferences, cultivating the same high-placed sources. This pack journalism is counteracted by each reporter’s dream of the scoop, beating everyone else to the big story that makes a difference.

Somewhere between the scoop and the pack, the club has provided a welcome respite for the working press. Formed for reasons of camaraderie, the club has helped to shape the press corps and to define legitimate reporting. Unique among world governments, the U.S. allows reporters themselves to determine who deserves a press pass. Both the press galleries and the press clubs have guarded this prerogative jealously, and have labored diligently to decide whom to admit. Sometimes they have been too narrow in their definition and too slow to diversify. But ultimately the galleries and clubs have expanded to accommodate a more diffuse news business, one that continues to evolve with each startling technological breakthrough. The Internet will not be the last. A central institution in this transformation, the National Press Club has provided a common ground for newsmakers and news reporters. It would be hard to image the Washington press corps operating without it.

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Author: Kathryn Lasky (on JOMB)
Illustrator: David Clark (on JOMB)
Published: 2006 Charlesbridge (on JOMB)
ISBN: 1570915954 Chapters.ca Amazon.com

Surprisingly descriptive, thought-provoking text and a cast of goofy, grinning hooligans provide a peek into a career in nautical crime as a reflective rogue ponders pillaging — its logistical details, dangers and doldrums — and grapples with issues of greed, freedom, friendship and distrust.

Other books mentioned:

• Tough Boris

Author: Stephanie Calmenson
Illustrator: Jan Ormerod
Published: 2007 Clarion Books (on JOMB)
ISBN: 0618510346 Chapters.ca Amazon.com

Three adorable dogs and plenty of vicarious petting cleverly disguise the delivery of essential, clearly stated instructions for dealing with dogs — friendly and otherwise. If only instruction manuals were all so thrilling.

Other safety books mentioned:

• No Dragons For Tea

More Dogs on JOMB:

• “Let’s Get a Pup!” said Kate
• The Pound from the Hound
• Poodlena
• The Trouble with Tilly Trumble
• The Outside Dog
• Dogs’ Night
• I Want A Dog

Check out the full list of non-fiction picture books nominated for the 2007 Cybils Awards here.

Author: Shannon Riggs
Illustrator: Jaime Zollars
Published: 2007 Albert Whitman & Co. (on JOMB)
ISBN: 0807557641 Chapters.ca Amazon.com

Classroom shenanigans, expressive illustrations and the delicate weaving of carefully chosen details make this important story a haunting yet hopeful nudge toward breaking the silence of sexual abuse.

Shannon Rigg has supplied the following resources to help start making noise about sexual abuse:

• Darkness to Light
• Center for Disease Control Sexual Violence Fact Sheet
• Child Help USA

Author: Jean Pendziwol
Illustrator: Martine Gourbault
Published: 1999 Kids Can Press (on JOMB)
ISBN: 1550745719 Chapters.ca Amazon.com

Softly illustrated and secured in unshakable rhyme, this engaging adventure sharpens fire safety smarts with a perfect balance of silly sweetness and serious suspense.

Other books mentioned:

• The Magic Hockey Stick
• Once upon a Dragon (Stranger Safety for Kids)
• A Treasure at Sea for Dragon and Me (Water Safety for Kids)

Information about the National Book Festival’s Young Readers’ Toolkit can be found here