SABEW members vote to move to Arizona State

TALKING BIZ NEWS EXCLUSIVE

Members of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers voted narrowly Monday to move the organization’s headquarters to Arizona State University.

The vote was 33, or 53 percent, voting for the move to Arizona State, and 29, or 47 percent, voting against the move, and was held at the SABEW business meeting in Denver. Individuals SABEW members received one vote, while institutional members — those where all business journalists at a media organization are SABEW members — also received one vote.

The organization, which represents 3,300 business journalists, has been located at the University of Missouri for the past 25 years. Membership is down about 5 percent in the past year. SABEW also considered a proposal from the University of North Carolina.

“It is beautiful to be wanted in this kind of environment,” said outgoing president Bernie Kohn of the Baltimore Sun. “We want to come out of here as a unified organization.”

Arizona State is home to the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism.

However, the meeting included a number of board members who spoke on behalf of UNC and urged members to vote against the Arizona State recommendation.

Beth Hunt, editorial director of American City Business Journals, asked members with a vote to consider UNC, saying that Arizona State was the “shiny new thing.” The university’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism recently moved into a new building in downtown Phoenix.

Scott Newman, a Bloomberg News employee and a member of a SABEW task force that examined the proposals, also argued on behalf of UNC. “Things need to change,” he said. “And things need to change with UNC. You want someone to take a hold of SABEW.”

The SABEW board voted 10-8 earlier this month, with one abstention and three members not voting, to recommend to its members that it move to Arizona State.

Diana Henriques, a senior financial writer for the New York Times and a SABEW board member, told the members that the decision to recommend a move was a “hard-headed decision about how this fits in with the strategic direction of SABEW.”

The 2010 annual SABEW conference will be held at Arizona State.

Adam Levy

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View Comments

Gary Perilloux says:
April 28, 2009 at 2:01 am
Big loss for Missouri, strange move for the organization -- though I'm not privvy to the inner sanctum of decision-making here and SABEW's sounding a lot like a PR organ with vested interests to disguise.