Board Minutes

MEETING
May 4, 2005 • 5 p.m.
Witherspoon Student Center
Student Senate Chambers

CALL TO ORDER
by Josh Bassett at approximately 5:05 p.m.
Rebecca Heslin volunteered to function as secretary for this meeting and to keep minutes.

REPORTS
All board-appointed student leaders are required to submit reports before each Board meeting.

EXECUTIVE SESSION
The Student Media Advisory Board may adjourn into executive session to discuss matters of litigation, potential litigation or personnel.

Fiscal status
Americana still has a respectable portion of the amount that was budgeted for it. Other than payroll, our largest budgeted expenses were a sound system and the open mics. We never bought a sound system because we managed to obtain unlimited use of a public address system in Witherspoon that wasn’t being used. As far as the open mics, we didn’t always purchase the same amount of coffee and cookies. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that Mike (the global village owner that provides our snacks) may still require payment. This is being investigated.

As the fiscal year closes, we’re hoping to squeeze in a few more purchases. We plan to buy mouse pads to go in most of the labs. They will have our logo and our URL. This will use the amount remaining in what was budgeted for publicity. Finally, using a portion of what was intended to purchase the sound system, we will buy a few microphones and stands for open mic events.

Personnel
Our new staff members have done a fantastic job in their efforts to support Americana. Jeff Horn, Lauren Peele, and Kerry Robinson have played pivotal roles.

As our GM, Jeff has been on top of things before complaints could even be made. He has also been more organized and consistent in his handling of meeting minutes and timesheets than any other staff member I’ve seen in my time with Americana. He is a regular volunteer for any collaborative
effort to be made among the staff. He can be depended on to complete any job quickly and efficiently, no matter what it entails.

Lauren Peele has continued to grow even more enthusiastic about Americana as a publication. She will explore any idea that we can come up with for publicity. She managed to get a banner with our URL over the Atrium. She got information about our publication on the unity kiosks around campus.
She persuaded the heads of various campus computer labs to allow us to replace their mouse pads with new ones featuring our logo. No matter what event or organizational meeting she is attending, she makes sure to tell them about the site.

Kerry Robinson has been amazing. She’s taken on duties not explicitly detailed in her job description. As arts editor she was expected to solicit content for the art section of Americana and be sure that quality work was published. In addition to that, she has consistently created colorful, intricate cover pages for our issues. She has designed flyers that were eye-catching. She has developed screensavers for the kiosks that feature information about Americana. If it dealt with design and we asked Kerry about it, she would have a finished product to us in a couple of days.

Equipment
We’re purchasing some mics and mic stands for our open mic event. Before now, the majority of equipment that we were using actually belonged to a band mate of John Federal, our OMN emcee. With the P.A. in Witherspoon, our own mics, and mic stands we should be able to hold OMN without depending on items borrowed from others unaffiliated with Americana.

Production status
We had a minor setback, and we were forced to push our publishing schedule back a week, but now we are fine. We published our next to last issue of the semester this weekend. Its theme is Death and Rebirth. The final issue of the semester will be the usual “Best of…” issue that is left up for the summer.

The expenses of The Nubian Message have not changed much. There have been a few circumstances where we have had to reimburse individuals for monies use for supplies (photographs).

The Nubian Message staff experienced several changes. After new editors took office, Aniesha Felton (former co-editor) became the news editor. Johnathan Brunson severed ties with the publication. Before leadership change, a number of people listed as staff members were removed from the list because they could not fulfill the responsibilities of the editing or writing position. The failure to complete the requested responsibilities came as a result of time management and/or ability to perform efficiently.

News: Aniesha Felton
Copydesk Chief: Shameica Gardner
Writers: Kyle Alston, Joy Johnson, Tony Moses
Sports: Marcus Gibbs
Photographers: Tiffany Key, Jerry Blackmon

Production Status:
We are ironing out the problems of meeting deadline. Meeting deadlines should improve as the editors get everything into place and become more familiar with the process.

Equipment:
We need better computers in the office so that we can use it more frequently for office hours, computing (composing, research, etc) as well as for (better) production sessions.

Staff Turnover
All in all, the transition on April 1 was very smooth.
I was very impressed with this smoothness and firmly believe it marks
good things to come. This month has been a learning process for all and
ideas have really been flowing. We can now take what we've learned this
month and put our effort toward improving the publication.

New section editors -
News - Tyler Dukes; Deputies - Erin Welch and Haley Huie
Sports - Ian Jester; Deputy - Joe Overby
A&E - Jake Seaton; Deputy - Chris Reynolds
Features - Jasmine Modoor
Photo-Jeff Reeves; Deputy - Melih Onvural
Graphics - Win Bassett and Katie Graf

Advertising
As per every April, advertising sales skyrocketed. Thus, our content was bumped up and we produced more than the typical eight-page paper most days this month.

Summer production
We will continue as a weekly publication. This summer will run much smoother as the majority of the editorial board will be around Raleigh. I will be attending a journalism program in D.C. and Patrick Clarke, managing editor, will run the show day to day and have signature authority regarding payroll while I am gone, but I will remain the one responsible for the editorial content as per my job description.

Windhover 05 came out on time and on budget.
Reception was April 29, two weeks after the book came out.

With the 2005 book, there has been an up-rising from the graphic design community mainly, feeling that the designers voice was to strong and disrespectful to the work featured in it. Also that the submission process was not fair. Basically it has spurred a lot of great discussion, both positive and negative from first year students all the way to the faculty and department head of graphic design. My
observation with the rest of student community is that Windhover has been received as more an interesting and cool artifact.

This discussion on the book has been interesting, and if approached as part of Windhover, rather than just an outside forum, it could be a interesting new part incorporated for the 2006 book.

Publicity: submissions, also getting out word for the book
Web site: submissions, showcase of different navigation of book, discussion
Book w/ CD: Literary pieces, visual pieces (English Dept. / Communications Dept. / Music Dept. / College of Desig)

Will be working with the above depts to more involve the university as a whole. Will advertise for positions to work with each areas, with the goal of establishing a relationships/ interests between these people and Windhover.

STAFF:
A full board of directors turnover has taken place
Dave Nourse, general manager
Brian Ware, program director
Sean Hill, engineer
Scott Ingles, daytime music director
Tricia Heath, daytime music director
Stefanie Keto, Afterhours music director
Channon Smith, production manager
Steve Salevan, local music director
Hannah Branigan, promotions director
John Jernigan, webmaster)
Will Patnaud, consulting engineer

STAFF ISSUES:
We are in the process of reworking the training program to account for changes in technology, equiptment and rules. Future KNC staff members will be thouroghly trained in all of these aspects once the new process is instituted in the fall.

TECHNOLOGY:
We have been purchacing equitment to better serve the staff and the listeners of our 25,000-watt station.
Equipment includes a Web interface for the transmitter, a PC & skimmer and for 100 percent recording/archiving purposes, a industry standard sound card for production and new on air studio equiptment such as cue-speakers and CD players.

RENOVATIONS:
This summer KNC will see a face-lift in its on-air studio (with new walls, paint and firnature) and the building of an open production for DJs to use in what is the conference room.

SUMMER TASKS:
The training program will be reworked, the remote transmitter will be fixed, the on-air studio will be renovated and the production studio will be built.