NLGJA Photo

Ted Allen poses with Pam Strother.

End of an era: Strother exits NLGJA

By Emily Alpert
NLGJA Reporter Staff Writer

Ten years ago, when she joined NLGJA’s staff, Pamela Strother was an unlikely poster girl. During conventions, she shied from the spotlight. She loathed public speaking. When she was nervous, NLGJA Vice President Karen Bailis said, she chewed on the insides of her cheeks.

Fast forward to Miami, 2006. At a ritzy welcome reception, Strother stands before hundreds of conference attendees, who noisily mill about, snacking on hors d’oeuvres. Over the din, she speaks confidently. She wears a tailored gray suit, a crisp green shirt, and, as Gail Shister notes, her glasses are “slammin’.”

In October, Strother will step down as executive director, and she’s doing so in style. The shy — not ugly — duckling has grown into a high-profile swan, a model executive director and a self-assured leader, and even network bigwigs like Fox News President Roger Ailes say they’re sorry to see her go.

Strother joined NLGJA as director of development. She had impressive non-profit experience: Previously, she had worked with the Fund for the Feminist Majority and Zero Population Growth. Still, when she became acting director in 1999, filling Mike Frederickson’s shoes, she was “very young,” said Robert Dodge, former NLGJA national president.

“She’d never had to take on something like that,” Dodge said. “It would have scared a lot of people. But she put her nose to the grindstone, and got the work done.”

That included conquering her shyness.

“When I was hired as executive director, it was part of my job,” Strother said. “I said to myself, ‘This is part of your job description, and you need to do it. Even if it’s hard.’ ”
It’s tough to dig up goofy stories on Strother, the type of stuff coworkers might dish about at a roast. She’s no humorless drudge — Bailis says she can trash-talk about women’s basketball with the best of them — but her professionalism is so immaculate, so complete, that she hasn’t made those kinds of flubs.

“She knows how to meet people wherever they happen to be, whether they’re a top news executive or the CEO of a huge non-media corporation, or a couple of guys who run their own PR business,” said Bailis. “Just knowing that she was there always reassured me.”

As NLGJA, founded in 1990, wobbled out of its infancy to adolescence, Strother steadied the fledgling organization. In a posse of wide-eyed idealists, her practical approach and management savvy made her indispensable.

“It’s a hard group to run, because our views are all over the place, and so many of us are passionate,” Shister said. “Those board meetings — I’d rather have a paper cut than go through another one of them.”
Said Dodge, “NLGJA was started by a group of people with a lot of energy, who saw a shortcoming in society and wanted to do something about it.” Those visionaries “often don’t know how to govern. They’re good revolutionaries, but they’re not good managers.”

Strother is both. Her many talents steered NLGJA through its sink-or-swim period. “When people look back on these years,” added Dodge, they’ll likely dub her NLGJA’s “second most influential person,” behind founder Roy Aarons.

In her six years as executive director, Strother has more than doubled NLGJA’s staff and tripled its budget from $350,000 to more than $1 million. Membership grew from 900 to 1,300, Dodge said. And she fostered the NLGJA Student Project, which trains young journalists in print and broadcast media.

Outside the office, she was proud to see CBS staff win domestic partnership benefits during her tenure. Strother says it’s most challenging to confront managers who have “flashy materials about diversity” that aren’t reflected in the workplace.

“I have to let them know that if they’re leaving us out of policies, they’re not doing diversity,” she said.

A lifelong news junkie, Strother says she got interested in LGBT media issues as a news consumer, not a producer. She had grown weary of seeing LGBT people and issues ignored or distorted by mainstream media.

“When I learned that NLGJA existed, I thought it was the most fantastic thing in the world,” she said. Out gay journalists, she thought, could directly address the coverage problems that distressed her.

Today, after a decade immersed in the journalism world, Bailis said she’s as knowledgeable, if not more so, than any good reporter.

 “Her mind is an encyclopedia of who’s who and who’s where in the world of journalism,” added Bailis. “That’s invaluable.”

“It’s hard to imagine us without her,” said national president Eric Hegedus, who said a search committee, formed this summer, is employing a firm to winnow out leading candidates.

 Though she’s sorry to go, Strother — who will remain a dues-paying associate member of the Washington chapter  — said she felt it was time, both for her and for NLGJA.

“Change has to happen so organizations can grow,” she said. “I knew I was ready, that I’d really given my all to this organization.”

Hegedus agreed. “She’s able to leave because of what she’s built,” he said. “Her thumbprint’s on everything.”

It’s fitting that, as she departs NLGJA, she’s still building. Strother and her partner, clay artist Margaret Boozer, bought a 1928 bungalow last summer in Brentwood, Md., and she plans to spend the fall installing “everything from drywall to cabinets.”

Capable hands, it seems, are never idle.