SPJ Invites Helium Writers Into the Professional Tent

By Rick Edmonds   

Until this morning you may have thought professional journalists were those who still work in newsrooms or make a living freelancing, producing in new media or teaching the craft. Not so, the 100-year-old Society of Professional Journalists has decided. Today it is extending a membership invitation to 6,000 of the best writers active in the for-profit Helium writers' community.

 

It is a step forward for Helium, a well-capitalized venture with a suite of products, which has already reached deals with papers in North Andover, Mass., Springfield, Ill., and the entire Hearst chain to supply writers who can take up some of the slack of pared-down newsrooms. Helium also offers to orchestrate user discussion forums at those papers' Web sites.

 

For SPJ, it is the latest in a series of actions to establish a beachhead in the citizen journalism community, acknowledging the increasing importance of that sector.

 

SPJ president Dave Aeikens, a reporter for the St. Cloud (Minn.) Times told me in a phone interview Friday that the decision did provoke some discussion but not hot debate before being approved by the organizations' executive committee. SPJ already accepts citizen journalists who ask to join (and associate members, for that matter, who support the organization's goals but are not practicing journalists). It conducts one-day seminars around the country to teach citizen journalist beginners the basics.

 

Aeikens acknowledged that it might rub some survivalist professionals the wrong way to invite in Helium's aspiring writers. "We looked at what they publish, and some of it was pretty simplistic," he said, and the work typically included little reporting.

 

That squares with what Helium Vice President Peter Newton told me when I did a Biz Blog post on the company earlier this year. Most members would define themselves as writers rather than journalists, he said, and the company, in its deals with newspapers, is offering soft features or community news -- not breaking stories.

 

Here is a sampler of Helium work, the lead of the top story on the site this past weekend about travel to Canada: "Canada is a fantastic place to visit! You'll never find a friendlier, cleaner and more interesting country to visit and if you live in the United States, it is only a hop, skip and jump from your country to ours."

 

Aeikens said that SPJ's leadership views the alliance as "an opportunity to reach more people who may be interested in pursuing journalism and offer them some resources" like background on ethics and First Amendment issues. Only Helium writers who do have those aspirations, he added, are likely to plunk down their $72 a year and join. There is a reciprocal part of the arrangement, inviting SPJ's 10,000 members to join Helium for free and use services to place work or circulate it through social media applications.

 

Helium has a complex system of grading its member writers. Those who file frequently, get high ratings for their stories from their peers and accept many rating assignments themselves rise to the top. Newton told me that there are about 20,000 currently active member/writers.

 

Aeikens said that SPJ believes in a "big tent" approach and has been reluctant to put a lot of limiting definitions on who is a journalist. Besides, he said of writers like the Helium members, "they're not going away."