Current Title: Director
Organization: Gannett’s Design Center
Country: United States of America
Twitter: @BecaRoze
Website: https://www.rmarkovitz.com/
LinkedIn
SND Statement
‘Storytelling with vision and purpose’
Every visual journalist should see being an active member of the Society for News Design as vital to their professional success – that SND is a living library full of knowledge, inspiration, and opportunity, and its membership has an all-access pass. My vision for SND revolves around keeping that library intact while also rolling out the red carpet to attract new members, celebrating our storied history, and embracing the fact that significant change is vital to remaining relevant.
When I look at my own personal journey, SND membership has shaped almost every aspect of my career, but I also recognize that the role of a visual journalist has changed dramatically during that time. As a professional society, we need to adapt at the same pace as our industry. If we cannot do that, we risk missing the next class of visual journalists. While many of our members still work embedded alongside their newsroom colleagues, there is a growing contingent of visual journalists who have recently joined our industry and may never experience working in a traditional newsroom in their career. How will we help these remote designers connect and grow? The Society faces a critical crossroads.
By numbers alone, these professionals play a large role in the future of our industry and are just as deserving of a place in our organization – something we can, and should, do a better job of embracing. As a Society, we hold an incredible amount of institutional knowledge that these new members would benefit from, on top of the fact that we as a group miss out on the creativity and storytelling that is evolving at every level in these outlets. This new SND board has an obligation to its members to foster a growing, thriving environment where everyone wants, and has, a seat at the table.
Any future for SND where we do not engage and support all visual journalists is bound to see dwindling membership, which will prohibit any hope of long-term success. I’ve been a paginator, an assistant art director, a design team lead, a department director – but no matter what title I may have held, my passion for what we, as storytellers, bring to the table has never changed. The same rings true for designers across our profession, no matter what our titles or where we work, the one thing we each aim for every day is to tell stories with vision and purpose. I do not pretend to have answers to all of the complex problems facing this new board, but I am willing to show up with an open mind, learn from others around me and work together toward solutions.
Change on any scale is inherently hard under even the best circumstances, but sitting back and doing nothing is not an option, and I believe that the best path to our collective success is to call on those who have benefited from belonging to SND in the past to help ensure that the Society for News Design not only continues to exist, but also grows and evolves to meet the current moment. Reshaping an organization so it can continue to empower, inspire, and support future generations of visual journalists will undoubtedly be hard work, but it is the clear path to long-lasting success.
Your vote for me for the new SND board of directors is one for passion, experience and inclusion – I want to pay back what the Society has meant to me, and ensure it adapts and thrives into the future.
Bio
Rebecca R. Markovitz has been a visual journalist for 16 years, working at The Wall Street Journal, Crain’s Cleveland Business, GateHouse Media and, most recently, Gannett’s Design Center. In her current role as a director of small/midsize markets, she manages a staff of eight teams, approx. 85 employees and oversees the daily print design of approx. 150 news sites, while also focusing on engagement and development initiatives. She has won dozens of industry awards for her work and designed a Pulitzer Prize-winning section for the Cincinnati Enquirer. (She also once hired a muralist to paint a cover illustration on a city wall, but that’s a whole other story!) Within SND, Becky is a frequent print competition volunteer and a former news team judge. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in Journalism, she currently lives in Pittsburgh with her cat, Duke, and spends her free time scouring antique stores and flea markets for treasures to add to her many collections and projects.