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January 2011
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Journalism Alumnae Switch Gears
Three Former Newspaperwomen Use Their Journalistic Skills to Enhance the Nonprofit Sector
By Campbell Massie
Strategic Communication Student
As the Journalist's Creed notes, journalism should promote international goodwill. Over the last century graduates have done just that, using their journalistic skills beyond journalism to assist nonprofit organizations.
Often philanthropic and charitable in their goals, nonprofit organizations do not distribute profits back to employees and shareholders but put whatever they gain toward services and the future of the organization. As they are not privately owned, they are run by controlling members and boards and receive tax-exempt status.
Although no longer a part of the newspaper industry, Margaret "Peggy" Engel, BJ '73, still works for the betterment of the profession as the director of the Alicia Patterson Foundation, a Washington, D.C.,-based journalism fellowship organization.
Grants from the foundation give working journalists the opportunity to take six months to a year off from deadlines to produce the larger, important independent projects they couldn't normally do. Foundation fellows' work can be found on the foundation's website, aliciapatterson.org. The foundation was created in memory of Alicia Patterson, who served as editor and publisher of Newsday for more than 20 years, to improve the quality of print journalism.
A journalist herself, Engel reported for the Lorain (Ohio) Journal, the Des Moines Register and the Washington Post after leaving Missouri with a print journalism degree at a time when journalism was shifting to computers.
Peggy Engel, BJ '73, is director of the Alicia Patterson Foundation, a Washington, D.C.,-based journalism fellowship organization.
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Sallie Gaines, BJ '72, is the spokesperson for the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation, a philanthropic organization providing grants for projects to support society, the arts and the environment.
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Sarah Slavick Malakoff, BJ '07, is a communications specialist for the Jewish Family and Children's Service of Minneapolis. Photo: Courtesy of Sarah Slavick Malakoff.
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"We had a lot of old-school journalists teaching us who were amazingly good for a lifetime of working with the rational and irrational in journalism," Engel says. "They barked orders, and you had to follow them. I complained at the time, but I learned to work both within the boundaries and beyond the box."
Engel came to the Alicia Patterson Foundation in 1987 when she became pregnant with her first child and sought a career that wouldn't keep her on deadline late into the night.
As director of the foundation, Engel finds herself dabbling in every aspect of its work. She runs the annual competition to determine the fellows, advertises the program and the work the fellows produce, works with the board of directors, maintains relationships with fellows, keeps up with office finances and supplies, and more.
Often smaller than for-profit companies, nonprofit organizations must adapt to function without basic office support. While Engel's organization hires outside contractors for services such as printing, legal advice and accounting, she has learned how to supervise and keep track of the work to be done. She also uses Internet-based and print media to participate in the international journalism conversation and inform journalists in multiple ways about mid-career fellowships.
"The ability to write quickly and clearly is indispensable," Engel says. "The journalism school prepared me, and now I don't have to hire outside people to write things such as speeches, grant proposals or informational documents."
Government regulations on nonprofits and journalism intersect for Engel. Having once covered these state institutions for newspapers, she must now determine what departments to file papers with, how to get in touch with them and which forms to fill out in order to keep her organizations registered.
"Knowing how to research like a journalist helps run nonprofits," she says. "A core value the journalism school showed me was being alert to the outside world and how institutions work."
Engel sits on the board of directors of several other nonprofit organizations, including a local library, The Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Helen Hayes Awards. She was the managing editor of the Newseum, an interactive museum in Washington, D.C. dedicated to the history of news. These organizations have helped her compare and improve every aspect of her nonprofit's structure from printing to staff.
Although the Alicia Patterson Foundation receives money from Patterson's family, Engel says the constant need for fundraising can be a nonprofit's biggest challenge, because it interrupts and diminishes the time they can spend on their work.
While nonprofit organizations do not run like traditional businesses, do not yield profits to stakeholders and benefit mainly charitable causes, they must still be concerned with enhancing their profits to achieve their goals.
"A lot of people think there is a granola haze of good intentions in nonprofits," Engel says. "But nonprofits are extremely time-consuming and organized."
To former business reporter Sallie Gaines, BJ '72, philanthropies and nonprofits represent a pillar of a strong economy. She recently became the spokesperson for the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation, a philanthropy providing grants for projects to support society, the arts and the environment, and she believes nonprofits just make good business sense.
During her life, philanthropist Margaret Cargill gave away more than $200 million of her wealth, mostly anonymously. Along with the foundation named for her, Cargill established the Anne Ray Charitable Trust and the Akaloa Resource Foundation, which can donate money to a list of organizations specified by Cargill.
The Margaret A. Cargill Foundation, the newest of the three grant foundations established at Cargill's bequest when she died, gives the trustees freedom to determine worthy organizations and projects to fund within the scope of causes she supported, such as education, arts and culture, care for the elderly and the outdoors.
Although the foundation is not yet fully functional yet, Gaines is busy creating a new protocol for internal and external communications, working with graphic designers to create a consistent feel to publications, handling media calls and anything else that might come up.
Throughout her career, Gaines has felt the benefit of a Missouri journalism education. Through actual work at a newspaper with deadlines and seasoned professionals, she says, the Journalism School prepared her to move into the newspaper industry and beyond.
"Missouri provides you with a real newspaper, a real TV station and real deadlines," Gaines says. "There is no substitute for having real deadlines."
After graduation, Gaines went to work for the Times Herald-Record in New York as a copy editor and eventually become the assistant city editor and assistant news editor. After three years, she was offered a job at the Chicago Tribune. Over the next 23 years, Gaines worked as a business reporter, copy editor and assistant editor on the national foreign news desk and the wire service.
As a business reporter, Gaines covered nonprofit organizations and philanthropies from a business and economic perspective. She wrote about the ways nonprofit organizations, including schools, hospitals and charitable services, strengthen regions by building more desirable communities and often bolstering the economy.
Twenty years into a newspaper career, she found herself bored and looking for a challenge. She started work at Hill & Knowlton public relations in 2000, and there she discovered a passion for communication on the other side of journalism.
Although she handled many clients, including the Margaret A. Cargill foundation and other non-profits, Gaines enjoyed crisis work, where she not only had the attention of senior executives but they also listened. She also enjoyed helping executives understand communications plans in order to translate their ideas into something people care about.
While part of a public relations firm, Gaines had to put equal effort into each of her clients, whether she agreed with their aims or not. Now part of a nonprofit, she is able to focus all of her attention on the needs of a foundation she truly believes in.
"What a great thing to be working for an organization that can do so much for people," Gaines says. "Certainly it's a lot more fulfilling than helping a company sell more widgets."
Both at a public relations firm and now for the foundation, Gaines has used her journalist's training to see the big picture for her clients. She figures out what questions to ask and views issues from the point of view of clients, consumers and other stakeholders.
"If you are trained as a journalist, you are trained to ask the right questions and get answers," she says. "I can't think of any job on earth where journalism training isn't helpful."
Like Gaines, Sarah Slavick Malakoff, BJ '07, a communications specialist for the Jewish Family and Children's Service of Minneapolis, has used her journalism training for tasks far beyond her expectations.
"When you work for a nonprofit, you wear a lot of hats," Malakoff says. "The challenge as a public relations specialist for a nonprofit today is that there is a lot of responsibility to create a diverse message with fewer resources than a corporate entity would have."
After graduation, Malakoff only spent two years as a newspaper copy editor and left the industry when she realized her job was no longer in line with her career aspirations and life goals. Malakoff says she found it difficult to affect the big changes she wanted to in panicked newsrooms restricted by budget cuts and refusing to abandon the status quo.
"I entered the field feeling hopeful that I could bring innovations to how information is delivered to readers," Malakoff says. "What I found with many newsroom leaders was an inability and unwillingness to do this."
Malakoff found a home at the Jewish Family and Children's Service in 2009, and there she feels she can help the organization and the people it serves reach their full potential. Each year this charitable nonprofit provides 16,000 people of all ages and backgrounds with social services such as literacy programs, mental health support and career help. The agency also celebrated its centennial in 2010.
As a communications specialist, Malakoff uses her "bedside manner" honed at the Columbia Missourian to work with the public, clients and fellow employees. She finds her work - writing copy for flyers, brochures, websites and public service announcements, as well as designing and developing plans for events and service promotions - incredibly rewarding.
"The pieces I work on are helping make people aware of the services that we have that can help them feed their children, meet with a counselor, obtain a job and more," Malakoff says. "It is very rewarding to know I have a direct impact on thousands of people's lives."
Although no longer chasing deadlines, these three Missouri School of Journalism alumni have channeled their talents and skills from journalism into nonprofit organizations in the hopes of expanding their organizations and promoting goodwill.
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