2006 News: SABEW has been awarded $25,000 from Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation to launch several ethics-based initiatives

August 10, 2006
COLUMBIA, MO -- The Society of American Business Editors and Writers has been awarded $25,000 from Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation to launch several ethics-based initiatives.

The grant is the second awarded this year to SABEW from the Oklahoma City-based journalism foundation. In May, the group received a challenge grant funded by Ethics and Excellence as well as the James L. and John S. Knight Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. That grant provides for up to $25,000 in one-to-one matching funds raised by SABEW before May 31, 2007.

The latest grant will help launch a re-examination of ethical consideration that today’s business journalists face. Planned initiatives include workshop seminars, publications and web content.

“SABEW has long played a leading role in terms of ethics in business journalism, and this grant will help augment our efforts on that front,” said SABEW President Dave Kansas, Money and Investing editor for the Wall Street Journal. “It’s more important than ever for journalists to operate with the highest level of ethics, and we’re dedicated to that mission.”

SABEW was founded in 1964 to improve the ethics and professionalism of business reporters. The organization has 3,200 professional members who are primarily working journalists in the U.S. or Canada.

Martha Steffens, the SABEW Chair in Business and Financial Journalism at the University of Missouri, said the grant helps SABEW to update its ethics code in light of changing technology and changing pressures on financial journalists.

“The advent of e-mail interviewing, attack bloggers and real-time journalism have all changed the playing field for journalists and sources,” she said. The grant will help SABEW host ethics sessions at the organization’s spring and fall conferences, Steffens said. This October, the group will host two-hour session on ethics will include panelists Barney Calame, public editor of the New York Times; Matthew Winkler, executive editor of Bloomberg; and Dan Colarusso, business editor of the New York Post.

There will be a larger meeting on ethics at the SABEW annual conference in Anaheim in May, which is an extension of work that began in 2003 with funds donated in the name of former SABEW president and founder Gary Klott, who died in 2002.

SABEW is a 501(c)3 organization based in Columbia at the Missouri School of Journalism. Ethics and Excellence Foundation was founded in 1982 through the largesse of newspaper owner Edith Kinney Gaylord of Oklahoma City, and is dedicated to the improvement of journalism.

The New York-based Ford Foundation is funded by bequests from Edsel and Henry Ford, and is an international philanthropy dedicated to causes that strengthen democratic values and advance human achievement. The Knight Foundation, based in Miami, donates to journalism organizations and to community projects in designated cities.
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Please join SABEW in this exciting time by sending your tax-deductible donation today to:
Society of American Business Editors and Writers
385 McReynolds Hall
University of Missouri School of Journalism
Columbia, MO 65211

Or to charge your donation to a credit card, simply call the SABEW office at (573) 882-7862.

A downloadable Pledge Form is available on the Development Opportunities page on SABEW web site.

Thank you for sharing in this exciting time for SABEW.