Legal Defense Fund receives cash and pledges through fundraiser

Quill, The, Sep/Oct 2009

Attendees of the 2009 Convention had to worry not only about oversleeping and missing sessions, they had one other worry: going to jail.

SPJ's Legal Defense Fund was the center of the Convention's Jail-n-Bail fundraiser. People paid $5 to file charges, such as dangling participles in public and improperly inverting a pyramid, against another attendee. A sheriff then arrested the person and brought the offender to jail. The convict spent the next hour raising $100 bond to be released, either by soliciting cash donations from passers-by or calling and texting friends and colleagues to collect pledges.

Ron Sylvester, who gained notoriety as one of the first journalists to use Twitter to report the proceedings of a federal criminal trial, used the microblogging site to collect over $100 in pledges in under 30 minutes.

The event raised over $4,300, primarily cash, for the Legal Defense Fund. SPJ's Long Island chapter gave $500, the largest single donation. Former president Dave Carlson was the jailbird who raised the most money, collecting over $250 in cash and pledges.