REGULAR MEETING
March 11, 2008 • 7 p.m.
The Hood Board Room on the second floor
of the Dorothy and Roy Park Alumni Center on Centennial CampusCALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order at 7 p.m. by Peyton Holland. Bradley thanked Broolyn Winters and the staff of the Alumni Center for allowing us to use this great meeting location.
Present: Alicia Davis, Peyton Holland, Vincent Sheehan, Bob Ashley, Dean Phillips, John Clark, Phil Zachary, Al McArthur, Mary Beth Hamrick, Josh Harrell, Joe Wright, Steve McCreery, Bradley Wilson
Others present: Martha Collins, Krystal Pittman, Jamie Gilbert, Fred Eaker, Ashley Benton (Technician reporter), Megan Peters, Matt Walton, Alison Harmon, Helen Dear, Meredith Faggart (Technician photographer), Bryan Spund,
Not present: Selby Lo, Laura Kenny
OLD BUSINESS
Approval of the minutes from Feb. 12, 2008 CLICK HERE The minutes were approved unanimously.
NEW BUSINESS
- New Board member — Peyton Holland announced that Student Body President Bobby Mills had appointed Alicia Daivs, on Feb. 14, to fill the seat vacated by John Napoli for lack of attendance. Napoli was an at-large student body rep.
- The Board unanimously approved the removal of Laura Kenny from the Board. Laura was an at-large student body rep. and the Student Body president will have to fill this vacancy. Kenny did not attend meetings in October, February or March. We will ask Bobby to fill the vacancy ASAP with one of the candidates for the Board currently running for election.
- Hiring of Agromeck editor. (John Cooper Elias)
- Hiring of Nubian Message editor. (Kishea Phillips)
- Hiring of Windhover editor. (Joe Wright)
The Board unanimously approved the hiring of John Cooper Elias as Agromeck editor, Kishea Phillips as Nubian Message editor and Joe Wright as Windhover editor in three uncontested applicants after hearing their opening statements and asking a few questions. Phil Zachary, on behalf of the Board, stressed to this new group of editors that they really work to increase. He said there is great leadership coming in but they need to focus this year on bringing more people on board to share in their passion. Recruit more people. Enrich the media with new ideas.
- Hiring of Student Media business manager. (David Mason, Phillip Smith)
The Board voted unanimously to hire David Mason as the next student business manager. Board members spent considerable time discussing the skills that both David and Phillip brought to the operation and agreed the business office needs both of them. Board members emphasized to David that he needed people like Phillip on staff and that David's leadership skills will be an asset to the staff but he must work to build the team.
- Hiring of Technician editor. (Saja Hindi, Maggie Luckadoo)
The Board voted unanimously to hire Saja Hindi as the next Technician editor. Board members discussed the youth of both candidates and said they felt like Saja had the experience, the ideas and the passion to lead the staff next year.
- Hiring of WKNC general manager. (Adam Kincaid, Kyle Robb)
The Board voted unanimously to hire Kyle Robb as the general manager. Board members stressed how much they liked Adam's vision and his ideas for new media and that they hope Kyle will take advantage of Adam's passion, ideas and enthusiasm. Board members also said they were impressed with Kyle's discussion of collaboration between and among the media outlets and that his leadership skills were right for WKNC at this time.
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. 28 at noonAGROMECK
(submitted by Mary Beth Hamrick, editor)Looking to next year — As we are wrapping up the 2007-2008 Year in Review, we are discussing who will fill positions on next year's staff. Coop and I have decided there should be three on the editorial staff: editor-in-chief, managing editor/photo editor, and design editor. The managing editor position is undergoing a change to comply with next year's budget. Instead of the role that Coop and I have filled over the last two years as managing editors, the ME will be more of an assignments editor who will do the dirty work of making assignments to writers and photographers and bugging them until they are submitted.
Production schedule — The Agromeck staff submitted a deadline of 64 pages to Taylor Publishing in Dallas on Feb. 25. The final pages of the book will be submitted to the plant on March 12. The printed books are scheduled to be delivered to us on April 23.
NO REPORT
NUBIAN MESSAGE
(Submitted by Al McArthur, editor)Staff recruitment/retention — As always, we are on the lookout for new talent, whether it be designers, photographers and most importantly writers. Right now we do not have enough writers to be comfortable. The same writers are production constantly each week and we are almost in a period of burnout. To remedy this situation we have been using articles from uwire.com and we have been actively looking for new writers.
Budget — The Nubian Message has received some ad money and is following its budget very closely. Everything is going to plan to end the year in the black and not red.
Deadline progress — The staff has been meeting deadlines pretty consistently. No significant problems.
Issues — The Feb. 20 issue was only four pages. This happened because there wasn't enough content to cover eight pages whether it be articles, photos or designs. To correct this problem I have tightened deadlines and prepared a back-up selection of articles to choose from if ever the need arrive again.
TECHNICIAN
(submitted by Josh Harrell, editor)Budget -- The advertising revenue and payroll issues are still being monitored and seem to be looking better this semester than last. The budget is still being worked on for next year and we have a made a number of cuts to the payroll to more directly match with our revenue.
Staff recruitment/retention -- Laura White, the managing editor will be stepping down effective Friday, March 14. We will spend a week without a managing editor, then whoever is hired as editor in chief will take over in a managing editor-type capacity. We think this will better help prepare the editor to take over for me this summer by giving them deadline and management experience. Members of the Technician staff have visited several classrooms to recruit new members. We've had a couple new faces join us, but the effort has not been truly successful. This may because it's already too late in the year. We're also working on our plans for this summer and making sure we have the staff to man the recruitment efforts at New Student Orientation. We have continued our monthly training sessions divided by each staff. We've received positive results again this month and believe the more individualized training is helping to generate stronger ideas. We also conducted a senior editor training on the Timeout for Diversity results.
Deadlines -- Early in the month, we really struggled at making deadline, making only 50 percent in a two-week time span. The editorial board met the Sunday after those two weeks and talked about what was going wrong. Since then we've made 100-percent (as of Feb. 28) and are figuring out how best to get things done earlier.
Technology -- Tyler, Fred and I are continuing to work with the business office to come up with new ways to make money off our Web site. We've figured out how to place an ad around an audio slideshow and hope to get a sponsorship or two before the end of the semester. We getting something like this started will help pave the way for new methods next year. We also are working on getting stories online earlier when they're just breaking. This month we've been better about this, posting breaking news and updating stories throughout the night of the Northern Illinois shooting. We actually beat much of our usual competition in this and were able to post graphics and photos within an hour after it happened. We've also been better about getting stories that happen on Friday or over the weekend online before the Monday paper, for example, a story on Greek Village was written Friday for the Web and then another version for Monday's print edition.
One correction and how the staff handled it
Tom Stafford, vice chancellor for Student Affairs, sent an e-mail to Bradley Wilson, Technician adviser, at 11 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 28, notifying him of an error that occurred in Wednesday's edition of the Technician in a story written by staff writer Kyle Mills titled "University Counseling Center assistance unaffected by NIU." Moments before Dr. Stafford sent the e-mail, Michael Bachman had tried to call student editors, but there were no editors in the office to take the call.
The story featured Bachman, the associate director of the Counseling Center, speaking on the effects the shooting at Northern Illinois University has had on NCSU's Counseling Center. The e-mail reported that Bachman had been confused with Lee Salter, the director of the Counseling Center, and that Salter was actually the one who Mills talked to and got the quotes from.
Bradley forwarded me the e-mail and let me and told me what he knew about the situation. Saja Hindi, the news editor, and I contacted Salter at 1:30 p.m. Thursday and spoke to him about the story. He noted that he was initially contacted Tuesday morning, but was not able to get back with Mills until 5 p.m. that day. He told us he had been misquoted in saying "There is no need to promote the Counseling Center at this time." What he actually said was there was no need to promote it in a crisis situation that is away from N.C. State. I told him we will be running a correction on the front page and that he could write a forum letter or column explaining his position. I also told him we will be writing a story for the week after spring break about the Counseling Center.
Saja called Mills after we learned of the incident and I contacted Stafford and Bachman immediately after my conversation with Salter and left messages with both of them. Bachman contacted me back at 2 p.m. I talked to him about what Salter had said and told him our plan of action. Since I had not yet talked to Mills, I could not tell him the reason for the mix up in names. I talked to Stafford at 3:30 p.m. and he expressed his concerns over the subhead which read "Counseling Center representatives say there is no need to promote counseling." This was pulled from Salter's quote which was untrue.
Mills came and talked to Saja and me at 6 p.m., after our daily editorial board meeting. He presented his notes and told me how he came up with Bachman's name. He first tried to call the Counseling Center around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday. The operator told him that someone named "Mike" would call him back. Mills again called sporadically between classes then at 4:30 p.m., the operator transferred him through to Salter. Mills assumed this was Mike Bachman, after looking up the name Mike on the Counseling Center's Web site. After the interview, Mills realized he had not asked the name and after calling the Counseling Center shortly after 5 p.m. he was not able to get back in touch with any of the staff.
Mills did not relay the full extent of the misinformation to the news editor and should not have based his attribution on vague information. Saja should have been more careful with making sure information is valid and we should not have run the story if he had not gotten the name of the interviewee from that person. We ran a correction and clarification on the front page of Friday's paper at the same spot the previous story had run. Mills' mistake was an honest one, and though he will remain on staff, his story that was supposed to run Friday ended up being a double-byline story as our deputy news editor Chris Allred co-authored the story and helped Saja and Mills verify any info in the story. Mills is also contacting Salter and Bachman to apologize for the error and explain what he learned in the process.
WINDHOVER
(submitted by Joe Wright and Hannah Richardson, co-editors)Windhover is almost complete and will be sent to the printer the week before Spring Break. The designers are making final touches and working closely with the printer to finish the book. We’re looking toward planning the reception and distribution of the book as well as updating the Web site.
WKNC
(submitted by Steve McCreery, general manager)NO REPORT
Society for Collegiate Journalists
(submitted by Clark Leonard, president)NO REPORT
CLICK HERE for PDF version of monthly update
OVERALL as of Feb. 29, 2008 (67% through fiscal year) Payroll Supplies StaffDvlp./Travel Current Services Capital Outlays Contracted Services Fixed Charges Grant TOTAL EXPENSES Fee income Non-fee income TOTAL INCOME NET
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