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Updated: Monday, December 24, 2007 Published: Wednesday, July 28, 2004

RELATED LINKS Committed to the Cause Foreword Foreword from the 1st Edition Chuck Stone Vernon Jarrett Bob Reid Les Payne Merv Aubespin Al Fitzpatrick DeWayne Wickham Thomas Morgan III Sidmel Estes-Sumpter Dorothy Butler Gilliam Arthur Fennell Vanessa Williams William W. Sutton, Jr. Herbert Lowe Jr. Remembering Vernon Jarrett (1918-2004) CREDITS Publisher Herbert Lowe Editors Jack E. White Lynn Norment Photo Editors Fred Sweets Hillery Shay Copy Editor Mira Lowe Researcher Wayne Dawkins Design & Layout Nicole Sherman Print Source & Maria A. Newman NABJ Marketing & Publications Manager & Wanda Ng Big Fish Communications Executive Director Tangie Newborn SPECIAL THANKS to Knight Ridder and the Lexington Herald-Leader for their support of this publication.

Then serving as vice president-broadcast, Pressley was breaking bread with past president Vanessa Williams and some others after a serious meeting in January 2001. With no funds to fly the full NABJ board into the area, top officers had gathered in Greenbelt, Md. ,to discuss the group's deteriorating financial status, and the numbers were sobering.

A budget deficit of more than $300,000. Double-digit drops in membership. Program costs that often exceeded funding sponsorships. A pattern of spending without adequate planning or control. And a downturn in the stock market that led to tremendous losses in NABJ's investment portfolio.

With an NABJ presidential election looming, the group needed a chief executive who could take quick control targeting money-losing programs and financially unsound practices regardless of who championed them.

Williams had a blunt question: Would Pressley run for the job? She was very complimentary, saying . . . sometimes you don't choose when it's time to serve, the time chooses you, said Pressley, speaking by telephone from her office at WSB-AM in Atlanta, where she serves as assistant program director. At the time, I was very much about not getting into the stress and drama and focusing on my career. But true leaders . . . they are chosen. Sometimes, they don't get to make the choice.

As it turns out, Pressley took the helm as NABJ's14th president during a time of intense change both inside and outside the organization. Over her two-year term, she would face the challenge of erasing NABJ's massive deficits and creating new internal systems for spending and programming, while training new leaders within the group. Meanwhile, NABJ also weathered attacks from anti-diversity author William McGowan, fallout from the New York Times/Jayson Blair scandal and the splintering of the Chicago chapter into two acrimonious factions.

Pressley's strategy: Get back to basics. Don't spend more money than you have. Teach every official how the organization works. Meet deadlines. And keep members informed of everything done in their name.

I was a very basic, 'block-and-tackle' kind of a leader, she said, noting the football analogy. (NABJ) never really wrote down anything. And if we did, we didn't put it some place where people could find it. So one of my primary objectives was codifying practices and procedures and making sure we did what we said. I brought an ability to say no.

Later in 2001,before Pressley was elected president, a coalition of nearly 100notable NABJ members including Williams and former NABJ presidents Sidmel Estes-Sumpter, Chuck Stone and Thomas Morgan III circulated a letter to members warning of budget deficits and calling for a financial oversight committee to take control.

Noting that participation in the 1999 Unity conference in Seattle and the 2000 national conference in Phoenix had depleted the group's financial resources, the coalition suggested a financial oversight committee and demanded better fiscal responsibility. That was a mandate which wasn't lost on Pressley once she started in the president's position.

Her mantra was, 'Under promise and over-deliver,' said Glenn Rice, a reporter at the Kansas City Star who served as treasurer under Pressley. When she spoke, you knew she thought about it first. Condace was not going to be one of the rah-rah types, yelling at the top of her lungs. She was a genuine Southern lady.

Pressley's changes ranged from refusing to extend deadlines for early convention registrations to requiring board members to get approval for any airline ticket costing more than $300. Board members were asked to take responsibility for projects such as planning the national convention or running the Media Institute. And regional conventions which failed to earn money were curtailed or eliminated.

Rice said NABJ officers were encouraged to keep in mind the group's average member: a 25-year-oldfemale working at a mid-to-small size newspaper with three to five years experience.

I thought our conventions were too long, we didn't charge enough and programming was a big issue, he added. If you're going to spend five days of your vacation going to a convention, you'd better give people something.

Eventually, NABJ's budget would go from serious deficits to a $250,000 surplus. Pressley's one regret? Failing to raise enough revenue to replace the $400,000in long-term savings NABJ spent after the Phoenix convention to meet its budget deficits early in the crisis.

For two years, being president of NABJ was the equivalent of working two full-time jobs, each of which required 80 hours of work a week, Pressley said. But I believe very strongly in flawless execution, and made sure we delivered on what we said we were going to do.

Of course, Pressley's challenges as president ranged beyond fiscal matters.

She can't remember when she first heard about the young, black man fired from the New York Times for high-profile plagiarism. But by the time she had run the media gauntlet to respond to racial implications of the Jayson Blair scandal, Pressley had appeared on CNN, MSNBC ,C-Span, National Public Radio, ABC's Nightline and beyond.

NABJ was definitely the flavor of the month for two or three weeks, noted Pressley, who issued two press releases and made scores of appearances to insist that Blair's transgressions were not enabled or glossed over by any misguided attempt at affirmative action at the Old Gray Lady.

If there is something of which I am especially proud, it was being able to represent the organization well when folks were looking at us and not saying particularly nice things about African-American journalists, she said.

Pressley's roots in NABJ run deep.

A member since 1987, she joined the organization one year after coming to WSB as a reporter/anchor a position she earned straight from the University of Georgia's broadcast journalism program, where she earned a bachelor's degree. As she advanced at WSB, from producer to assistant news director to assistant program director, she also worked hard for NABJ, serving two terms as a regional director and one term as vice president-broadcast. She also served as treasurer for Unity: Journalists of Color for its 2004 convention.

Pressley's career has also served as an example of how service to NABJ can help acquire skills that bring achievement in the workplace. She readily admits that serving as a regional director helped build her confidence to seek management positions at WSB. Similarly, the fiscal planning skills and discipline that she learned as an assistant news director helped her develop strategies for guiding NABJ through some of the most challenging times in its history.

I believe strongly in NABJ as an organization, and I wanted whatever I did to be about the organization, Pressley said. It wasn't about me, and it's not important to me that I get credit. What was more important to me was that the leadership team feel good about their experience and we secure the future of our organization.