How AWC Helped Grow My Career

Jo-Ann Huff Albers is a long-time member of AWC going back to the days when it was known as Theta Sigma Phi. Over the years she has served on many committees and on the national board, including a term as chair. Now retired after a distinguished career in journalism, Jo-Ann shares what her membership in AWC has meant to her and her career.

Excited to Join

I anxiously awaited being eligible to join Theta Sigma Phi. I admired the members with whom I worked at The Cincinnati Enquirer.  I had graduated from Miami University in May 1959 – the sesquicentennial year of the university – that had no campus TSP chapter.

To be eligible for professional membership, one had to be female, employed in editorial capacity of a news medium for at least five years and nominated by a current member.  A dozen or so were ready to do that for me.

Why the excitement to join?  There were a number reasons at the beginning and more developed over the years. TSP/WICI/AWC :

• My membership allowed me opportunity to learn things I didn’t know without having to admit I didn’t know them.

My employer when I was becoming eligible, The Cincinnati Enquirer, wasn’t great about on-the-job-training, especially not for women.
I vividly remember in about 1973 the day the editor announced that because all the news department employees were so deserving we were being provided IBM Selectric II typewriters.  I responded: “And we’ll be preparing camera-ready copy on them, won’t we?  The managers appeared shocked, and the people with whom I worked asked “What’s camera-ready copy.”  That’s when we entered what a You Tube video calls IBM Selectric II typewriters Ball Madness – writing and editing copy for optical character readers.  It was a hellacious time for news staff, the move to cold type.

• My membership provided a social life for me.

My husband didn’t like being in large social groups or traveling. I did. I could attend TSP meetings in town and across the country when I became a region director and went onto the national board. 

• It allowed me to do a lot of traveling.

My membership in TSP/AWC enabled me to do a lot of traveling around the United States and even to London, Israel and Greece in 1973 when I headed the U.S. delegation to the meeting of the World Association of Women Writers and Journalists in Israel.  The bulk of my traveling in the states was to TSP/WICI/AWC national meetings.  I’ve missed only three since my first one in 1987 in Detroit as incoming president of the Cincinnati chapter.

• Membership allowed me to serve on a national journalism council

I served 28 years as its representative on the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication which boded well for me when I decided I wanted to become a journalism education administrator.

• It provided leadership training

In a time when leadership training was not easily available for women, my membership led me to a program where I could receive that training in a safe environment when my employer wouldn’t promote me.  I learned of the Carnegie Mellon Program for Executives. The first time I applied for a CMPE journalism fellowship and would have been accepted, the editor said I couldn’t have a leave of absence because “It would look like you’re going to be promoted to something you’re not, and we have some developmental moves to make.”

(Actually, I misspoke there. The part about developmental moves was said when I wanted to accept a government invitation to go to the Antarctic to learn about research being done there when I was the environment reporter at the paper. )

• It provided a network of professional friends who gave me great advice about getting ahead.

Three of the most helpful came from Gloria Biggs, Gannett’s first female publisher of a daily newspaper (Melbourne , Florida, that morphed into Florida Today); Marjorie Paxton,  TSP president (1963-67), who was a predecessor  as editor and publisher of Public Opinion in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; and Margot Sherman, my immediate predecessor as president of  Women in Communications Inc., first woman graduate of the University of Michigan journalism department,  who became senior vice president and assistant to the president at McCann-Erickson advertising agency and  the first woman to serve on the agency’s board. (See the March 29, 2019 post to discover what their advice was and how it helped me!)

Move to Academia

During my years on the Accrediting Council, I loved being on college campuses and thought I’d like to become a journalism education administrator. Gannett’s outplacement service provided all the assistance I needed to find that position, and Accrediting Council service located the university. I was head of the site visit team to Western Kentucky University in 1986 when its Department of Journalism was seeking a new “Head.” (Isn’t that an awful title??) I was working at the sports copy desk of USA Today when Dr. Robert Haynes, the academic VP, called to say he was unhappy with the quality of journalism applicants and wondered if I could suggest someone.  I said, “I’ve been thinking about applying myself.”  He said, “Great. The application deadline is tomorrow. We’ll consider this your date of application and send the required information as soon as possible.”

Founding Director of the School of Journalism & Broadcasting

I was hired to start in the fall of 1987. I negotiated one semester of no teaching duties so I could get to know the university and be reacquainted with the state’s newspapers that I had known from by days as Kentucky executive editor of The Enquirer.  During my 17 years as head of journalism, I wrote a successful proposal for it to become a Kentucky Program of Distinction – The Center for 21^st Century Media with a $600,000 increase in budget and became founding director of the School of Journalism & Broadcasting after the broadcasting faculty sought to join journalism and got state approval for construction of a new building for SJ&B and university technology.   Broadcasting was accredited in the next accreditation cycle. When faculty complained about being in a shared building, I reminded them we were No. 2 on the state capital projects list for WKU and Information Technology was No. 1. That’s when I proposed one building to house both activities.  I knew the state wouldn’t go for two buildings. I had asked for a new building first in 1987 and kept asking every year until we were approved.  

Retirement is Just Another Chapter

I entered the five-year optional retirement program, teaching part-time. In April 2006 I was diagnosed with lymphoma. After successful chemo treatment, I taught my last class in spring 2007. In August of that year, we moved back to Cincinnati to be closer to family. I was saddened by knowing there no longer was a Cincinnati AWC chapter, but I still maintain my membership in AWC, enjoy attending AWC National Conferences, and remain active in the communication field. (See below.)

 

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