I am a member of the Society of Professional
Journalists’ San Diego Pro Chapter. My membership and San Diego
awards for design, editing and writing go back to 1996.
It’s a really ironic thing, I think, that the
man who for whatever reason chose to wage a public campaign against me
in local media is also a member of this chapter, and has even served as
a member of the SPJ San Diego board. He also sits on the SPJ’s
national diversity committee. That’s all fine, and of course
never mattered to me. I didn’t even know who he was, nor did I
have a reason to know him.
Regardless of the public accusations thrown at me
since February, I didn’t expect Leo E. Laurence would escalate
his campaign to include the SPJ at the local and national level, which
he has done. At the end of April, I was taken aback by an entry he
placed on the SPJ Diversity Blog. I posted a response and
appealed directly to the leaders of the SPJ national diversity
committee, and the entry was promptly taken down.
However — as many living with today’s
cyberspace environment already know — once it’s out there,
it’s out there. And despite the SPJ’s good effort to remove
the post, it’s still circulating out there. I found it recently
on some other blog site (joined.com) that I am not a
memeber of (nor am I interested). So, again, in my effort to
protect my hard-earned professional reputation, I am publishing below
my response to the original post on SPJ, which was removed with the
original post itself back in April. This “shadow post,” as
I will call it, does not contain my response from what I can tell.
re: ALLEGED HOMOPHOBIA AT CITY COLLEGE OF SAN
DIEGO
Tuesday, April 28, 2009 8:22 PM by rskoenig
This is Roman Koenig, the journalism adviser at
San Diego City College, publisher of the North Coast Current monthly
online news journal, and San Diego SPJ member.
As one of the already publicly established targets
of the accusations covered in this post, through published articles
written by the accuser himself in San Diego, I am dismayed by what I
see as the continued assault on my character and that of my students in
the San Diego City College journalism program. I am more dismayed to
see this kind of behavior continue through the Society of Professional
Journalists.
These public accusations — published without
fact but portrayed as fact with no opportunity for fair response
— have led me to seek legal consultation regarding the
publication responsible for the articles.
The two links below are my blog entries
representing my public response to this point, and include links to the
original articles in question:
http://www.citizenkoenig.com/2009-0318.htm
http://www.citizenkoenig.com/2009-0418.htm
I am frustrated and disappointed that the SPJ is
now a venue for this.
-- Roman S. Koenig
