Board Minutes, Oct. 2, 2007

Oct. 2, 2007 • 7 p.m.
Student Media conference area, Witherspoon Student Center, third floor

PRESENT: 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, Hannah Richardson, Steve McCreery with Bradley Wilson, Jamie Lynn Gilbert, Fred Eaker and guest Drew St. Claire, a DJ trainee from WKNC.

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

Staff recruitment/retention
We now have three freshmen designers that regularly spend time in the office. Since they are new, they work slowly but they are getting the hang of how we do things. Also, we have four writers who regularly take assignments and we have two in training. Of course we always need more writers so Coop has attended several journalism classes to make contacts.

The Agromeck staff participated in Parents and Families weekend as a way to market the yearbook to our target audience. We partnered with the Parents and Families Association to sponsor a football toss during their Pre-Game picnic. During this time, the staff helped the families feel welcomed to the event and gave out postcards with yearbook purchasing information.

Deadlines
The first staff-instituted deadline on Sept. 21 was not met. All pages have content and the designers are slowly learning our process. They have not been taught to finalize pages. In addition to completing the first deadline, we are working on the pages for the Oct. 19 deadline, a deadline set by the publishing company, which I believe will be completed. The
staff still has a lot to learn. A design day scheduled for Oct. 6 will allow the designers to learn how to finish pages.

Staff recruitment/retention
The Nubian Message has 23 people on staff. We have also hired a new photographer and interviews are scheduled with two prospective writers. The staff includes 10 writers, two copy editors, two photographers and five section editors. We are planning an open house for late October, to assist with recruitment and to help make more people aware of the paper.

Budget
There are no significant deviations from the budget.

Deadline progress
The staff has been meeting deadlines pretty consistently. No significant problems

Staff development
Staff awards will be given monthly. The section that shows the most improvement and remains consistent will be recognized and awarded. One-on-One training will take place one Friday a month, focusing on the areas of AP style and copy editing lead by Dick Reavis. 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.

Now that we are well into the daily grind, the newspaper is becoming more routine — not always a good sign, but we're finding ways to mix it up.

Budget
The advertising revenue has dropped some since the beginning of the year. A drop was expected as the beginning of the year always produces high ad revenue. The key is making sure it doesn't drop so much that we're not meeting our expected income. The drop in ads and the static nature of the page count has been an issue section editors have had to deal with. The sports section often has too much content for the space it is allotted, so the editors make the extra stories web exclusive. Sections such as science & tech and focused have been hurt by late ad changes and have been forced to adjust and make emergency decisions.

Recruitment/Retention
The Technician class ended last week, and though the overall class attendance dropped from the first day 24 students graduated from the class. They are now working in their respective sections and are learning from the editors and more experienced writers. The new people have come in a steady flow into each section, unintentionally allowing for more one-on-one time with the editors. Section editors have said they appreciate them coming in steadily, and not at one time, and that the class has helped the transition process.

Training/morale
Student Media held its first training session of the year for photographers who are interested in editing. Four photographers came to the session and have since been added to the list of senior photographers who edit nightly for the Technician. The first staff-wide training session will take place at the end of this month.

This year, we will continue giving out monthly awards with a Board Bucks reward for the winners. We will be giving out the following awards:

The awards will be given as part of a staff recognition night, at which we'll have a dinner and a slideshow with the award nominees and winners.

One of the things Laura White, my managing editor, and myself are pushing for hard now is actually getting sections in early that should be in early. Sections such as viewpoint, page 2 and features are not as timely and should be in earlier at night. Many times we are sending those sections at the same time as news and sports. We're working with the respective section editors on how to get stories in early and how to plan ahead so designers are not waiting on content. We believe this will help with both deadline issues and editor burnout issues.

Writers in the news section have been presented with beat packets to start the new system we are working to implement. The packets include contact information for each beat, tips for developing relationships with the main sources and basics on how to get started. The goal through this system is to have a story a week from each of the 10 beats to ease some of the pressure put on the news editors each day. The writers are supposed to keep and update these beat packets as the year goes on, so that when they leave, they can pass the packet on to the next person taking the beat.

Technology
Sports has continued the football blogs when traveling for road games. The editors posted their last blog on their trip to Boston College and it seemed to be successful, based on the sites where the link for the blogs was posted. I will be joining the sports editor, Clark Leonard, and the photo editor, Josh Lawson, in Tallahassee this weekend, where we will post more blogs and a multimedia slideshow for the Florida State football game.

We have seen a sharp increase in the amount of message board posts by our readers on our Web site. Our online editor, Tyler Dukes, attributes this to the way readers have been trained to go to our Web site to talk about the paper's content. This is exciting news for us and we're hoping this will expand to our blogs and podcast.

Ethical issues
The Technician ran a story on Sept. 19 titled "Homeless on Hillsborough cause concern, fear for students," that was accompanied by a photo illustration. The illustration was of a random female student standing at night on Hillsborough Street with the blurs of people passing behind her. There was no caption for the illustration and the girl was left unidentified. The lead of the story was a narrative about a girl who had been stalked by a homeless person. So the reader's natural reaction would be to associate the girl in the lead with the one in the illustration. We printed a clarification and worked with the senior photographers on what constitutes a photo illustration and what needs to be done to prevent reader confusion.

Technician (Display and Classifieds)
7/1/07-9/30/07: $91,649.80
8/22/07-9/30/07: $91,575.93 with a daily average for the school year of $3,391.70

Technician (Display Only)
7/1/07-9/30/07: $85,283.54
8/22/07-9/30/07: $80,760.87 with a daily average for the school year of $2,991.14

The team of designers has collaborated with the co-editors to put together the first efforts of the Windhover advertising strategy. We distributed fliers and are in the process of producing bookmarks, which we will distribute as soon as students return from Fall Break. A Windhover advertisement will also appear in the slideshow before every movie shown in Witherspoon Theatre from the day after Fall Break until the submission deadline.

The Windhover Web site will be updated before Fall Break. The first meeting was Thursday, Sept. 27.

We are planning an open-mic poetry reading for the third weekend in November. We are working with WKNC, a local DJ, student artists and local businesses to put together this event.

WKNC’s first professional live remote broadcast took place last week from the Brickyard for Habitat for Humanity’s
“Shack-A-Thon” event. The event involved 16 campus organizations that built their own shacks and lived in them for five days to raise money for and awareness of Habitat for Humanity. This year, WKNC was the participating media sponsor, broadcasting live with the use of a Comrex remote broadcast system on loan from a broadcast supply company. It is our intention to lobby for this piece of equipment to be included in next year’s budget. While it is an expensive tool, the benefits of having this greatly outweigh the cost.

Wolfpack Sports Marketing and WKNC have reached an agreement for the 2007-2008 N.C. State baseball and women’s basketball play-by-play broadcasts. After many years of not having their per-game-rate raised, we have managed to increase it by 30 percent for this upcoming year, and another 15 percent for the following year. While this increase is both way overdue and small, it does pave the way for future increases in revenue for WKNC, and a decreasing reliance on student fee monies.

Oct. 4 is the last day of fall training for WKNC newbies. More than 30 are anticipated to graduate. All new WKNC graduates are being held to higher standards in terms of professionalism, with regards to their responsibilities of showing up for shifts and following the rules.

WKNC will be a sponsor of the Pack Howl concert at this year’s homecoming, Friday, Oct. 26 at Reynolds Coliseum. Headlining will be the Avett Brothers, and WKNC will provide on-air and on-site promotion as well as donor announcements, in exchange for a cash schedule. Details are being worked out between WKNC and N.C.
State Homecoming Committee members.

Last year's Double Barrel Benefit #4, WKNC’s annual fundraising live music event, is up for best station promotion, an award to be given out at this year's College Broadcasters’ Inc. conference in Washington, D.C. Oct. 25-28.