New prez of Press Club is a public radio veteran

Email from the Los Angeles Press Club brings the news that Chris Woodyard, correspondent in the Los Angeles bureau of USA Today, has passed the gavel after serving as president for two years. The new president is Will Lewis, the management consultant at KCRW who has a long and respected history in public radio. As the station manager at Pacifica's KPFK after the 1974 Symbionese Liberation Army shootout with the LAPD, Lewis refused a grand jury demand to turn over a tape recording from the SLA and answer questions about how the station came to have the tape. The grand jury also wanted a statement given to KPFK by the Weather Underground, which Lewis also declined. (Copies of both had always been made available to law enforcement and other news media.) Lewis spent 14 days in the federal prison on Terminal Island before Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas ordered him released.

Beth Barrett, the former Daily News reporter, is vice president. Jane Engle of the L.A. Times is secretary and Jill Stewart of the LA Weekly is treasurer.

Social note: The club is helping host a book party for author Amy Alkon ("I See Rude People") on Wednesday at Wednesday at the World Café in Santa Monica.