Board Agenda

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.

Since our first weekly staff meeting, we have averaged about 15 staff members per meeting, and 14 of these staff members are regularly present at our weekly meetings. Although this number is up from last year and although we are excited to see a stable group of students returning each week, we hope to further increase the number of staff members by considering new steps, including working more closely with the University's academic departments and encouraging staff to help recruit through word of mouth.

We successfully completed our first deadline on Friday, Sept. 22 by finishing the 16 pages due, and an additional spread. We are impressed with the staff for completing 18 quality pages on time even though we are a young staff dealing with a new approach to coverage. Although we successfully completed the deadline, I am working to pinpoint and address the obstacles the staff has been encountering on a day-to-day basis as we work towards these deadlines, which will become increasingly intensive as the year progresses.

We will hold our first staff training session for Sunday, Oct. 22 from noon to 4 pm. We are currently planning this training session, focused on writers and designers, to not only train students about design and writing for yearbook, but also to teach them about our new approach to coverage. To prepare for this training session, the section editors and I have compiled a list of widespread and reoccurring weaknesses in writers' drafts, and will work with Lee, the student media writing trainer, to devise methods of tackling these weaknesses before the workshop. Differentiating between strong and weak quotes, interview skills, and active versus passive voice are the primary areas we are targeting so far. Brandon Wright, Managing Editor, will work with designers.

To increase yearbook sales, the marketing staff, with the help of Krystal Pittman of the business office, has launched a fundraising partnership with student groups. Each student group will receive a $2 donation from Agromeck for every yearbook its members sell, either within or outside of the group. After the group sells 25 books, we will donate $5 for any additional yearbooks it sells. The marketing team has held two tunnel-painting and chalking sessions, and will be holding one to three monthly sessions from now until the end of the year.

I attended LDS 154 on Wednesday, Sept. 27 to fulfill my monthly leadership class requirement. This two-hour course, Motivating Leadership, focused on determining the needs of others and fulfilling those needs as a leader to accomplish the team's overall goals.

Keitris Weathersbe • editor in chief eic@nubian.ncsu.edu
Niccoya Dobson • managing editor nickydobson@juno.com
Sequoia Ireland • photo editor sairelan@ncsu.edu
Elizabeth Miller • copy editor zilrellim@hotmail.com
Cherrelle Mickens • copy editor cmicken@ncsu.edu

Staff recruitment/retention
The Nubian Message is now completely staffed. A new webmaster was hired on Sept. 21, and is now completing training. We have also hired a new copy editor. The staff includes 15 writers, two copy editors, three photographers and five section editors. We are planning an open house for January, to assist the incoming editor with recruitment for the 2007-2008 academic year.

Budget
There are no significant deviations from the budget.

Leadership course
On Sept. 26, I attended the LDS 116 course- Leadership Practices Inventory. There, I completed a leadership survey, which helped me to better understand my leadership practices. This inventory also allowed me to see the characteristics I possessed, that I lacked and needed to work on. I would recommend this course to any wishing to investigate or improve their leadership practices. For October, I plan to attend the LDS-051 workshop; Leadership Tools for Women. For November, I will attend the Ethics and Actions workshop.

Deadline progress
The staff has been meeting deadlines pretty consistently. However, News encountered an issue with a writer submitting articles late and not completing assigned articles 2 weeks in a row. The problem was addressed.

Staff development
Staff awards will be given monthly. The section that shows the most improvement and remains consistent will be recognized and awarded. Training will take place one weekend a month, focusing on the areas of AP style and copy editing. Also, to provide the staff with a sense of “family,” we will continue to participate in social outings as a staff. This will occur once a month, following staff meetings.

Advisory Board
With following the recommendations of last year's task force, the Nubian Message advisory board will meet again this semester. This meeting is scheduled for Nov. 15 at 7 p.m. in the Student Media conference area. The board was established to provide the editor with advice and support in producing the publication. The board includes: Dan Holly, editor of the North Raleigh News & Observer; Fred Hord, director of the African American Cultural Center; Bradley Wilson, adviser for Student Media; Tracey Ray, director of African-American Student Affairs, and Dick Reavis, an assistant professor in English Department.

50th Anniversary Edition
We will publish a special edition to commemorate the 50th anniversary of African-American student admission to N.C. State. After the kick-off on Oct. 18, each regular edition will include facts, timelines with significant events, photos, etc. These details will reflect African-American history on the campus N.C. State University from 1956 to the present. The special edition will not have a significant effect on the Nubian Message budget.

The advertising staff has done a great job this fall generating revenue for the paper and ensuring we are doing great financially. They're doing so well, in fact, that due to a lack of editorial content, we have been making too much money on numerous issues over the course of the last few months.

Since we've began production in the fall, the Technician has averaged around 10.47 pages per day. There is a possibility that we will be forced to consistently produce a paper that runs in two sections every day. This is a lofty goal, but I am confident that my staff has the capability to motivate their writers, photographers and designers to generate a substantial amount of quality content that can inform and entertain the student body.

Bradley, Josh and I are working on a plan to do this. It is my belief that we will have something in place by the next board meeting that will set some tangible goals leading us to this point.

There have been some significant staff changes since the last board meeting. Emily Kiser, whom I hired originally as news editor, submitted her two week's notice Sept. 25 due to concern over her grades. A.J. Klingenmaier, viewpoint editor, also submitted his two week's notice Sept. 26 for similar reasons. In their place, I have hired Laura White, former deputy features editor, to serve as news editor and Megan Riley, former copy desk chief, to serve as viewpoint editor. Two of our most promising new employees will be filling the leadership gaps left by these two individuals. Kathryn Parker, a talented and dedicated features writer, has accepted the position as deputy features editor. Copy Editor Tara Croft has accepted the position of copy desk chief. The new staff list, complete with contact information, is listed below.

Since the last board meeting, we have also completed our 4-week "Introduction to the Technician" course. Based on the statistics Bradley compiled, I can definitely consider this new addition to the training of our staff a big success. Of all the individuals who began the course, 80 percent of them graduated, meaning they attended at least three of the four classes. This translates into 44 new staff members in areas arranging from sports writers to photography. Twenty-five percent of the students attended all four of the meetings. Participants also gave the entire course an average grade of 3.78 of 4. I would like to extend a special thanks to Bradley Wilson and Lee Williams. I think we can attribute the success of this eight-hour course to them, and I think this will lay an excellent foundation for an award-winning newspaper with a strong and well trained staff in the future.

After the graduation of these students Sept. 27, we were able to offer them the opportunity to come back to the office for free pizza and a chance to spend time with the editors during a night of production. This was the start of a reinstated tradition at the Technician called the "Monthly Mingle." Every month, we'll gather the whole staff together for food and a chance to hang around in the office in the middle of a production cycle. This will also give us an excellent opportunity to issue the monthly awards, which I will also select each month. The next Monthly Mingle is scheduled for Oct. 25.

At the Sept. 27 Monthly Mingle, five individuals were issued awards for photo of the month, story of the month, design of the month, employee of the month, and cartoon of the month. In addition to receiving a plaque indicating their achievements, each staff member also received a $20 deposit to their AllCampus card. The award winners are listed below.

Finally, we have chosen five senior staff photographers. These individuals will assist the photo editor of the Technician , and eventually the Nubian Message and the Agromeck , in doing photo editing during the production process. They also help with communication between the photo editor and the rest of the section editors. So far, these individuals have done an excellent job, and the newspaper has benefited from their increased involvement. The new senior staff photographers are Ronald Nause, Sara Robertson, Daniel Joe and Danny Boemermann.

In addition to the completion of the "Introduction to the Technician" course, we've conducted and are planning several other training opportunities for the staff.

On Sept. 24, Bradley Wilson led a training session with the section editors to work on coaching lede writing. In addition, Austin Dowd led a training session on the same day for the senior photographers. Twenty people attended these sessions, and rated them an average 3.6 out of 4.

The lede workshop was especially important, and Bradley led the editors through several role-playing scenarios with a "new writer" who needed help with their lede. We were also able to go over some basic lede-writing techniques and work in groups to come up with good ledes for specific stories. Judging by the improvement I have seen in the ledes since the workshop, it's my feeling that this was something of extreme value to the staff.

I am also working to plan a design workshop for the month of October with the design staff to be led by former design editor and managing editor Patrick Clarke. In addition, I will be working with Bradley this week to set a date and topic for the next October training session for the staff.

I'm also extremely excited about an upcoming training opportunity that I believe will provide some of our staffers with some incredible opportunities. Oct. 25 through 29, the Technician will be sending 10 employees to the Associated Collegiate Press National College Media Convention in St. Louis. It seems this year that Student Media has the ability to take more staffers than ever before, and with the mixture of individuals we have traveling on the trip, we will be able to bring back an excellent array of knowledge to share with the rest of the team. Like last year, each staff member traveling on the trip will be required to write up descriptions of the sessions they attend. Bradley will then compile these into a document to be distributed among the rest of the staff. The list of attendees is below, followed by their interest. Sara Robertson, photo; Ronnie Nause, photo; Laura White, news; Colleen Forcina, news; Kathryn Parker, features; Kassie Gordon, features; Josh Harrell, sports; J. Mike Blake, sports; Clark Leonard, sports; and Tyler Dukes, news.

The production schedule has been fairly consistent since the start of the fall. Since then, we have met deadline 83 percent of the time, 3 percent more than our goal.

One of the areas we are weakest in however, is the situation with the midnight goal. Instituted for the sole purpose of ensuring sanity among the editors of the Technician, this midnight goal aims to send pages (and people) to bed early. Since the fall of 2006, we have met the midnight goal only 3 percent of the time. This is the lowest percentage this percentage has ever been.

This is a concerning trend, but one of the main reasons this staff is experiencing difficulty finishing things early each night is because so much of the production of each issue is completed the night before we go to press. Especially in the case of a paper 12 or 14 pages long, this can be difficult to do and can put extreme strain on certain aspects of production, especially design. One thing we have done to combat this however, is to be stricter with the enforcement of required office hours for section editors. This ensures these employees are present in the Technician office more before the start of production and thus get more of the daily routine (editing with writers, planning layouts) done before we walk in the door.

One of the best examples of this is in the features section. For the last several weeks, this section has been sent to press first, mostly because stories are in earlier and designs are planned in advance. Although the sheer nature of some sections of the paper, like news, may prevent planning to the extent features does, the section still serves as an appropriate model. It's my belief that if we strive to follow this model, we will begin turning in pages earlier and will be a much happier staff.

Along with Brian Ware, I attended a Sept. 19 leadership development course called "Team Building," instructed by Mindy Sopher. Although I don't believe this offered me a lot in the way of leadership, I did enjoy participating in the activities. One of the most valuable things I did learn during the class was that unexpected things frequently arise during the course of your leadership and that it is a measure of how good a leader you are as to how you deal with these unexpected events. I felt this was extremely pertinent to working with the Technician and bringing this to my attention helped me gain some good perspective.

I had originally planned to attend LDS 080 - Assertive Communication, Oct. 5. However, due to time restraints, I was not able to make the meeting. I will be looking into signing up for another leadership course in October.

In its Oct. 4 meeting, the Student Senate decided to pass the SMA Independence Referendum by consent, effectively placing it before the student body in the way of a vote during the Leader of the Pack elections Oct. 30 and 31. There is still a lot of work to do at this stage alone. I have already begun to assemble a group to plan a public relations campaign to inform the student body of the importance of this referendum. It is imperative that we work to get this referendum passed, especially since this particular election is often plagued by low voter turnout.

To avoid a potential conflict of interest, I'm also limiting the involvement of the Technician staff in this PR campaign and encouraging my fellow editors in their respective media to do the same. It's important that the newspaper covers the issue, but it's even more important that those in the news are reporting the facts accurately and objectively.

But even if the referendum passes, there is still quite a lot of work to do to change the makeup of this board, and discussing the issue at our meeting here would be a great opportunity.

I have hired a team of three designers and an assistant designer. The designers are Libby Levi, Josh Smith, and Paul Venuto, and the assistant designer is Rebecca Mayfield. Joel Mikkelsen has been hired as the music editor. These new additions to the staff bring the total staff number to seven. A team of volunteer literary readers is also being assembled.

The deadline for submissions is scheduled for Nov. 30, 2006. The book will go to the printer on February 21, 2007. The reception date is scheduled for March 21, 2007. These dates, however, are subject to change as we continue to assess our production schedule.

Designs are being made for advertising materials such as a postcard that can be mailed or handed out and will include information on submitting. The Web site submission information is being updated. We also plan to advertise in the Technician and on WKNC.

The design team is working on the aesthetics and function of the Web site. The updated version will include archives of the past issues, information on the awards Windhover has won and a brief written history of the magazine.

WKNC is still on the air with no engineering problems to speak of. The staff has been very active in all aspects of the station. Shack-a-Thon was a great success with WKNC. While we did not finish near the top ranked leaders in terms of money however we feel that it was a great experience for the staff as well as for the station.

The training class is still running strong. There have been a total of three training classes so far and the in studio hands on training is scheduled to officially start this coming week. We expect that by the end of this training class, that the WKNC schedule will be filled with a live body on the air 24 hours a day.

I attended the Team Building leadership class which was classified as LDS 019 which was taught by Mindy Sopher. The class was interesting and Ms. Sopher has taught a class that I took from freshmen year and she was part of my reasoning for choosing to take that particular leadership class. I have not as of yet signed up for another leadership class for October.

Sales for WKNC have been good. We have not had a block of programming in recent months past that has not had at least one DA spot running. The business office has been great in finding clients for WKNC and has stated that they plan to become even more aggressive with sales in the coming months.

Of particularly interesting news in terms of sales and programming for the past month is the return of a previous WKNC client. Project Rachel, a post abortion counseling organization funded by the Catholic Church, has approached WKNC with interest in running a DA on WKNC for a full month. WKNC's previous involvement with Project Rachel caused a significant amount of concern, voiced by both the staff and several listeners, involving several issues created by the DA. Among those issues were: the line "when you have an abortion, something inside of you dies," the sound of the DA was also misleading making it seem like a PSA, and the general script of the DA supported specific moral, religious, and political ideals that made it seem that WKNC was taking a political/moral/religious stance. After a series of lengthy discussions with the business staff and both Bradley Wilson and Jamie Lynn Gilbert, it was determined that the General Manager of WKNC does not retain the right to decline DA's that run within the station's programming. The general manager does retain the right however to control the content of the DA. This is brought to light due to my decision previously to decline accepting the Project Rachel DA on the grounds of alienating and losing current staff and listener base. After the discussion with the advisors and the business office, my decision was over turned. I would be remiss to not mention in this board report that I stand opposed to running the Project Rachel DA based on my previous statements as well as that I am opposed to the, seemingly recent, policy that takes away the right of the general manager of the "Student Run" radio station to determine that which can and cannot be broadcast over the airwaves of WKNC. I feel that is a decision that belongs to the general manager and the program director of WKNC so long as all decisions are made objectively and without any reference or influence to personal moral, religious or political beliefs.