Feb. 12, 2008 • 7 p.m.
Student Media conference area, Witherspoon Student Center, third floor
CALL TO ORDER
The meeting was called to order at 7 p.m. by chair Peyton Holland
In attendance: Selby Lo, Peyton Holland, Laura Laurene, Vincent Sheehan, Bob Ashley, Dean Phillips, John Clark, Sherry O’Neal, Phil Zachary, Al McArthur, Josh Harrell, Joe Wright, Steve McCreery, Mary Beth Hamrick, Bradley Wilson
Absent: Laura Kenny, Bobby Mills
Others present: Alisha Davis, Saja Hindi, Jamie Lynn Gilbert, Fred Eaker, Brandon Wright, Tyler Dukes, Jason McMillan
OLD BUSINESSS
- Approval of minutes of Jan. 15, 2008. CLICK HERE The minutes were approved by unanimous consent with no amendments.
- Update on March meeting, hiring of student leaders. CLICK HERE for PDF version of announcement. Everyone was invited to the March 10 candidate forum in Talley Student Center's Walnut Room, the night before the Board meeting which will be held at the Alumni Center on Centennial Campus.
NEW BUSINESSS
- Web assessment (Fred Eaker) CLICK HERE After viewing each of the sites managed by the Student Media and some of the features, including online sale of past issues of the Agromeck pages, multimedia of the Technician, and online purchase of photos, the group looked over the in-depth report prepared by Fred and a number of the students who work on the Web presence. John Clark said one of the most difficult things will be the mindset change involved with getting stuff up. The staff, he said, has to get past the mindset of just putting stuff in the paper the next day, but must think about getting relevant material online during the day. It's a constant evolution. He said the WRAL staff used to think about the online as "scooping" the television station, now they think of it all as just trying to get the news out in a timely fashion. Tyler Dukes expressed some frustration with the College Publisher system and how it uses a "by day" metaphor for publishing and makes it extremely difficult to update during the day. The College Publisher system also does not allow a reader to know when new stories are published except as part of that daily edition and has no way of noting when a story was last updated. Everyone agreed that more emphasis needs to be paid to the online presence, and we should strive for that culture change in all the media.
- High-definition radio proposal (Jamie Gilbert and Steve McCreery) (CLICK HERE) Jamie Lynn Gilbert went over the propsal that she, consulting engineer Will Patnaud, student engineer John Jernigan and others put together. Phil Zachary said this is the "latest and greatest" but he's not convinced it is consumer driven and has many obstacles, not the least of which that consumers have little incentive to by HD Radio receivers, and certainly the car companies don't because of their relationships with other companies. Phil said HD Radio would not be the savior to the industry. He agreed that HD Radio could do a lot for value-added items to the radio, particularly in the college market, including serving the Hispanic listeners. He agreed that we can use more "spectrum" but commercial radio does not need that. The group discussed uses for HD Radio, particularly public service uses such as giving more air time to events surrounding women's basketball and baseball, using the station for emergency updates, broadcasting significant lectures such as the Emerging Issues Forum and even Student Government candidate debates. Bradley Wilson reminded the group that $150,000 had been set aside for HD Radio last year. If they wanted to use that money for other projects, including student television, that was also a possibility. Phil Zachary motioned and Bob Ashley seconded that $15,000 be approved to acquire an HD Radio license from iBiquity Digital to meet the Dec. 31, 2008 conversion deadline.
- Time Out for Diversity report CLICK HERE Jamie Gilbert praised the staff for continuing to push to get more sources in the paper. Bradley Wilson said the staff has also done well in getting more engineering and science students in the paper, making the paper more representative of campus. He said he thinks this is largely due to the Science & Tech section led by Tyler Dukes.
- Budget cycle Bradley Wilson reviewed the monthly update and a meeting he had with Milburn Holbrook in Collections. As Krystal's and Kelly's memo (CLICK HERE) detailed, there were at least four problems with collections. (1) staffing turnover in the University Collections department that led to slower than desirable collection of past due amounts; (2) failure of a software implementation which should be resolved Feb. 15, 2008; (3) proper use of the credit card machine newly installed in the office; and (4) approval by receiving departments and University Collections of inter-departmental transfers. A signficant amount of the IDT monies had been approved Monday, Feb. 11 and had just been held up. The credit card monies had been approved through the new machine last week. Bradley noted on the monthly update that about 97 of the fee money income had come in. Because the Technician is behind in income it's likely the Student Media will end the year in the red, using reserve monies to make up the difference. However, the ultimate end-of-the-year status is extremely hard to determine now because of collections issues. As of Feb. 8, the Technician had billed slightly more than $252,000 (of which we anticipate collecting 94 percent), spent about $225,000 out of a budget of $349,000. However, as of Feb. 11, the Technician had only collected $147,129.63 (59 percent of billed).
REPORTS
- Agromeck CLICK HERE
- Americana CLICK HERE
- The Nubian Message CLICK HERE
- Technician CLICK HERE
- Windhover CLICK HERE
- WKNC 88.1fm CLICK HERE
- Society for Collegiate Journalists CLICK HERE
- Budget update CLICK HERE
EXECUTIVE SESSION
The Student Media Advisory Board may adjourn into executive session to discuss matters of litigation, potential litigation or personnel.ADJOURN
REPORTS
Due by Feb. 7 at noonAGROMECK
(submitted by Mary Beth Hamrick, editor)Budget — To save money in the budget for next year, we are looking into combining the managing editor and photo editor positions.
Personnel — Surprisingly, our staff is still growing. We picked up two new designers after the beginning of the semester and they already show dedication to the book. In looking at the situation for next year, Coop and I are discussing editorial positions and working on choosing staff members to fill those positions. The editorial staff members will take part in a workshop over the summer.
Production Schedule — The Agromeck staff submitted a deadline of 16 pages to the plant on Jan. 28. We are working on the next deadline of 40 pages due to the plant on Feb. 22. This deadline is critical because we will be submitting the final pages of real content.
Sales — We've sold 31 books.
Awards — The staff found out today that the 2007 book edited by Brandon Wright was a finalist for the Associated Collegiate Press' Pacemaker Award, one of the top two national awards. The book was already a CSPA Crown Award recipient, but won't find out until March whether it won a Gold Crown or a Silver Crown. This is only the second time in the University's history that the yearbook has received both national awards. The last time was for the 2004 book edited by Jamie Trivette.
NO REPORT
NUBIAN MESSAGE
(Submitted by Al McArthur, editor)NO REPORT
TECHNICIAN
(submitted by Josh Harrell, editor)Recruitment/Retention — Since the Technician staff failed to visit classes during the first week of the school year, editors will be visiting introduction classes around campus to recruit potential staff members over the next two weeks. We've made up lists for which classes we need to visit and are assigning an editor to each one. Our editorial board has remained the same through the beginning of the semester. Although those in entry-level positions seem to be in short supply, there seems to still be great interest in moving up within the newspaper and many on this editorial board have already expressed interest in staying on the board next school year.
Budget — We have continued to monitor the budget on a week-to-week basis, staying on top of advertising numbers and making sure we meet the story and photo limit we had set earlier in the year. This seemed to be a major problem in the fall semester, but we've been keeping better track of it this semester. We're also paying editors on a per-night basis rather than a salary, which has cut down payroll costs this semester.
Training — This semester, we are holding training sessions for each staff every month. At our first staff-wide training session of the semester, we had a good turnout, as each section split up and focused on a topic relevant to its staff. News and features focused on lede writing, viewpoint worked on making topics relevant to campus, photography learned how to create audio slideshows, sports focused on how to handle the Web in breaking news events and design worked on creating dynamic front pages.
Technology — We posted our first audio slideshow and video of the semester for the Krispy Kreme Challenge and the Polar Plunge respectively. Tyler, Fred and I have been meeting on a weekly basis for the past few weeks on how we can expand the Web site and start to make money off the number of projects we're working on. I've been meeting with Krystal and Kelly Brys (the advertising manager) about getting sponsorships for the slideshows and our daily podcast, and it looks like this will be a strong possibility for the rest of the semester. Our online responses to articles continue to grow as well.
Corrections — The Technician misquoted in an article titled "Staff expects GLBT visitor growth in coming month" (Feb. 5). Writer Ashley Bennett had paraphrased Rebekah Jaeger, a grad assitant at the GLBT center, as saying that turnout to the center has been lower than expected. The writer took what Jaeger had said out of context and assumed that statement. Another source in the story came to me to talk about it, and I have had a lot of trouble getting in touch with Jaeger. However, after speaking with the writer and her looking over her own notes, we decided it was best to take the story off the Web site for now and print a correction. Bennett is still a promising writer and showed me a great deal of maturity in dealing with the situation.
WINDHOVER
(submitted by Joe Wright and Hannah Richardson, co-editors)Windhover is on schedule and making significant progress toward our Feb. 29 deadline for submitting the final book to the printer. The designers are putting in many long hours and are implementing some innovative concepts for this volume. All submissions have been selected, and the track list for the CD has also been finalized.
We are also planning the reception/debut of Windhover ’08. It will be held in Caldwell Lounge and will include another open mic event like the one hosted last November.
WKNC
(submitted by Steve McCreery, general manager)WKNC Double Barrel Benefit #5: The fifth annual event was Feb. 1-2 at the Pour House in Raleigh and was a huge success. We raised $4,990 for WKNC, three times the amount of last year's net revenue of $1,600. Several factors contributing to this heavy increase were: Larger venue (in the past, DBB events were held at the now defunct King's Barcade); expenses were kept to a minimum because we traded our T-shirts and food for underwriting announcements, whereas in years past we paid for these directly from our revenue; we did a much better job promoting the event this year than in years past; finally, the momentum that DBB has gained over the years has given the event increased credibility. WKNC staff members who worked on DBB did an excellent job.
Relevant Senior Project Design: WKNC chief engineer John Jernigan and local music director Steve Salevan were able to get the N.C. State electrical and computer engineering department to allow them to sponsor a senior project at no charge to WKNC (normally a $5,000 sponsor fee would apply). The project revolves around building a small broadcast delay box that is cheap and easy to build to the point that other student engineers (at other universities) could build one from a kit. The delay box would be used to create a broadcast delay in the event an obscenity slips out over the air. One additional benefit to this is the savings it would produce, since a delay box costs approximately $3,000 if purchase through a broadcast supply store. The project, without unforeseen delays, could be finished as early as April 2008.
Non-Fee Revenue: $14,695 through Jan. 31. (This does not include Double Barrel Benefit revenue)
WKNC HD Radio: http://www.ncsu.edu/sma/board/hdradioproposal0208.pdf
Staffing: The position of "audio resources manager" was added to WKNC's roster of paid employees. This is an entry-level position designed to train someone every year to learn the ins and outs of all WKNC production, scheduling and trafficking software. There is a lot that has not been learned about these programs that could be helpful to the day to day operations of WKNC. The duties assigned to this position will likely be absorbed into the operation manager duties beginning April 1. Robert Earl is holding the position of audio resources manager.
Sales: As a follow up to last month's agenda item concerning WKNC sales: Jamie Gilbert and I will begin working on a plan to utilize the resources we have at our disposal - including our in-house staff, Curtis Media Group's Phil Zachary and sources at N.C. State's College of Management - and to contact all parties to begin the process. I am still concerned that the potential for greatly increased revenue at WKNC will continue to be compromised by the lack of a full-time sales leader who would be able to guide student sellers and manage them to sell properly, to maintain client relationships, and ultimately to decrease attrition of accounts.
WKNC Sessions Update: "Sessions at WKNC" is a project designed to increase the amount of publicity given to local bands through producing high quality professional audio recordings. At the moment, we have six of these sessions booked, featuring some of the finest local artists from the Triangle. One of the most interesting facets of the sessions projects includes the usage of the "creative commons" license, a revolutionary idea for improving the distribution of music over the Internet. Sessions will be continuing to record throughout the spring and summer and we hope to make it a continuous WKNC project. More to come.
Society for Collegiate Journalists
(submitted by Clark Leonard, president)SCJ met Friday, Feb. 8, to discuss progress for the Sunshine Week events we are planning. Right now we are hoping to draw in students Wednesday through Friday (March 12-14) for a few hours each day with a pie a journalist (prominent local journalist) event, while also handing out information about open records, as well as alongside this having free expression boards for people to write on, potentially with a prompt about a certain issue. At the Feb. 8 meeting, we inducted our new members: Hannah Branigan, Kathleen Gordon, Nicole Griffin, Brian Lewis, Morgan McCormick, Zachary Moser-Katz and Laura White.
CLICK HERE for PDF version of monthly update
To: Student Media Board
From: Krystal Pittman, business manager, (krystal_pittman@ncsu.edu, 919/513-0362)
Kellie Brys, student advertising manager, (kellie.ads@gmail.com, 919/515-2411)
Re: Collections
Date: Feb. 7, 2008Invoices
As you are aware we have had problems this past semester with our customers receiving neither our invoices nor other correspondence such as letters or tearsheets. Some of this was due to outdated customer information. And the rest we can only assume was lost in the mail. I have been working on this situation since October when we first were made aware of the problem. After resending invoices by mail and fax, I recently started seeing checks arrive for these invoices. That issue is on its way to be being resolved, unfortunately, the money is hitting our account later than any of us would like.Another issue is with our new way of sending invoices to accounting. In the past we would send duplicate paper copies of our invoices to the University Accounting Accounts Receivable department and their staff would have to manually enter in our invoice information into the university’s financial system. This semester we have been trying the new interface system in which I send an electronic file generated by our ad software. This file is “picked up” from this directory and automatically updated to the financial system. However, due to an error on my part in configuring this file this process has not been as smooth. Therefore, the past semester invoices are not in the financial system and do not appear in the Aging Report sent to us from the Accounts Receivables department. The invoices are still being tracked and managed through our own ad software. I have spoken with accounting and their technical staff, and we should have a successful interface on Feb. 15. As of right now we have roughly $80,000 outstanding invoices, but this number will start decreasing dramatically over the next month. I am starting to make progress on these collections most of which has been playing phone-tag with our customers and their accounting departments.
As far as the older past due collections on the Aging Report I am working with Milburn Holbrook and Valerie Ryan to clear up this debt. One member of the University Accounting Office’s staff who was helping in this process resigned, but we are all working not to let that set us back in our efforts. We will still achieve our goals on these old collections, ultimately obtaining about a 94 percent collection rate. We have several repeat offenders on prepayment now such as Balfour, The Preiss Company and Omicron. We will be pursuing collections on those advertisers aggressively, which may include turing collections over to the North Carolina Attorney General’s office.
Interdepartmental Transfers (IDTs)
At the end of January, $5,040.75 in IDT transactions were approved by Accounting for ads that appeared last semester in the Technician. We have an additional $30,621.02 waiting for approval. Most of these are for accounting a few others at the departmental level. I am in close contact with these departments to get the approval on their end. I am also sending a list to Accounting of the IDTs that need their approval. This money should appear in our account soon.Credit Cards
We are using a similar yet new machine this semester after having trouble with our old machine. After reviewing our account I noticed that no credit card transactions were listed. I contacted customer support on the terminal and they apologized for not informing me that there is an additional step in settling the credit card batches with this new machine. On Tuesday I followed the new instructions and settled more than $12,000 in credit card purchases that should be posting in our account within the week. There is a settlement option on the new machine just like the old and with the old machine you simply chose that option and that was it. It is not exactly the same for the new machine which required two steps beyond that.Summary
At the end of January 2007, the Technician had $202,520.75 in its account. As of today we have $128,371.18. If you factor in the $30,621.02 from IDTs awaiting approval as well as the $12,000 in credit cards recently settled then our account should be at $17,992.20.This is a difference from last year of $31,528.55. Considering the problems of this past semester, which I have never encountered in my four years as the Student Media business manager, the collections issue will be remedied over the next month.
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