NCEW takes the lead: a season of opportunities make a difference.

Throughout the year, I have been so impressed with NCEW members who have gone out of their way to contribute to the organization. Susan Nielsen of The Oregonian is a good example. Nielsen, the Portland convention chair, spent hundreds of hours putting together one of NCEW's bestever gatherings.

I deeply appreciate what Nielsen and others have done to make 2005 a successful year. Doug MacEachern, the Masthead editor, has put out spectacular issues, some of which had people calling for extras. Becca Rothschild put together an outstanding State Department seminar in Washington, D.C. Vanessa Gallman led another great Minority Writers Seminar in Nashville, Tennessee. So many more of you stepped up to lead that I could fill the rest of this space with names of NCEW's good folks.

In yet another illustration of great works, I recently returned from an event that NCEW helped sponsor with the Office of Global Perspectives at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

John Bersia, a long-time NCEW member who writes a foreign affairs column for the Orlando Sentinel, called at the end of May to see if NCEW would be interested in partnering with the UCF office, which he directs, to put on an annual one-day conference on international affairs. My immediate response was, "What a great opportunity," and after getting support from NCEW's Executive Committee, John and I went to work on a date and a place.

After agreeing on a topic--"Political Violence in the 21st Century"--John and his office did the heavy lifting in arranging for panelists and speakers. The keynoter was Lieutenant General (ret.) Jay Garner, who was the first director of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in post-war Iraq. Garner impressively stayed for the entire nine-to-five gathering, talking with participants in between sessions and asking questions or commenting on panel issues.

The three NCEW members I invited to moderate or participate in the panels did remarkable jobs. Austin Bay, a syndicated columnist who has been to Iraq as a soldier, was a panelist in a discussion of "The Evolving Terrorist Threat" and then stuck around to serve again on a panel regarding Afghanistan (which he recently visited) to fill in when the Afghanistan ambassador was unable to attend due to a last-minute emergency. Because of his vast personal and professional experiences, he contributed much depth to both panels.

Moderating a panel on "Iraq: Progress, Deadlock or Chaos?" was NCEW's Dan Simpson, a former U.S. ambassador who has served in several countries and who now serves on the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His extensive knowledge made him an ideal facilitator for the session that included Ambassador Robin Raphel, coordinator for Iraq reconstruction at the U.S. State Department. Simpson contributed to one of the conference's memorable moments when he adamantly challenged Major General (ret.) Robert Scales of Fox News fame on Scales's representation of facts regarding U.S. involvement in Syria.

And Jonathan Gurwitz moderated the day's final panel on "The Future of Afghanistan." Gurwitz, an editorial writer for the San Antonio Express-News, set the scene by painting a verbal picture of Afghanistan as a country "ground into the dust economically, politically, and culturally." Gurwitz, I might add, heads up NCEW's International Affairs Committee and is in the process of planning two events for next year.

NCEW's legacy in participating in this event will live on via the Global Perspectives Office. A video crew taped the conference and will be showing it over the university television station as well as making it available for study. Bersia and I plan to repeat the event next year, tentatively for the second week in November (after the election). Please share with me any ideas you have for topics.

And coming up soon is another partnership: Several of us will be attending the annual December conference for editorial writers sponsored by the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland at College Park. Thanks go to director Carol Horner and her outstanding staff, including Peggy DeBona and Laura Abramson, for this great educational and networking experience.

Kay Semion, president of NCEW, is associate editorial page editor of The Daytona Beach News-Journal. E-mail kay.semion@ news-jrnl.com