Let CAABJ Work for You

This is a message to African-Americans working in media or communications in the Charlotte area. I’m writing to tell you a little about the Charlotte Area Association of Black Journalists (CAABJ), in case you're not familiar with us or haven't kept up with us recently. I hope that you will feel compelled to join this great organization.

CAABJ holds meetings, workshops, and social and networking events throughout the year. You can simply peruse through previous postings on this site and read recaps of some of our many successful events, those that we've held for our members as well as the community. We also utilize our resources to help connect members with professional development, jobs, freelance opportunities, internships, and we award a scholarship annually to a student majoring in journalism or communications at a local college or university.

As with any nonprofit, membership-based organization, CAABJ is only as strong as its members. And there is indeed strength in numbers. We would love to be able to count you as a member of CAABJ. Membership dues are only $35 a year for associate membership and $50 a year for full membership. And please note that 100 percent of these funds go toward CAABJ programs, events, and its scholarship. In addition to the funds that are generated, we can use more talented professionals like you who can contribute ideas on how we can become a stronger organization, so we can make an even larger impact in our industry and the Charlotte community.

Currently this is a very challenging time for journalists and all professionals working in media. As I’m sure you are aware, most media outlets generate the majority of their revenue from advertising sales, and during this recession with many businesses not spending much money on ads in print, broadcast, or electronic media, media companies have been forced to layoff workers. Newspapers are shutting down, magazines are folding, and TV and radio stations are cutting programming.

But we can survive this. And CAABJ can be a great resource for you. Even if you feel secure in your current position, we as black journalists and media professionals should never lose sight of the work that must continually be done to ensure that opportunities will be there for us and the young men and women who are seeking to break into our industry. In fact, a new membership benefit we recently added to CAABJ was creating a jobs bank in which we compile a list of local and regional employment opportunities and email to our members. Many of these job listings are sent to us directly from media companies and often aren’t posted on traditional job search websites.

There is a lot of work that CAABJ is doing that, quite frankly, probably would not be getting done if the organization didn't exist. But we know there is more work to be done and we can't do it without you.

To become a member of CAABJ, you can download a membership application by clicking here.

If you have any questions about the organization, please feel free to contact me.

Thank you,

Jarvis Holliday
President
Charlotte Area Association of Black Journalists
Email: hollidayink@gmail.com