Student Media Board
MINUTES

Nov. 6, 2007 • 7 p.m.
Student Media conference area, Witherspoon Student Center, third floor

 

CALL TO ORDER

The meeting was called to order at 7:02 p.m. by Peyton Holland.

MEMBERS PRESENT: Selby Lo, Peyton Holland, Vincent Sheehan, Laura Kenny, Bob Ashley, Dean Phillips, John Clark, Sherry O'Neal, Phil Zachary, Al McArthur, Mary Beth Hamrick, Josh Harrell, Steve McCreery, Bradley Wilson

MEMBERS ABSENT: John Napoli, Laura Laurene, Joe Wright, Hannah Richardson

OLD BUSINESSS

1. The minutes of Oct. 2, 2007 were approved unanimously. CLICK HERE

NEW BUSINESSS

1. Creation of Technician Advisory Board; update on Nubian Message Advisory Board — Bradley explained the history of the creation of the Nubian Message Advisory Board, a recommendation of the Nubian Message Task Force that recreated the Nubian Message a couple years ago. The recommendation of that group was the creation of an advisory group that would "meet with the editorial board twice per semester in the fall and spring semesters to discuss standards, mission and areas for improvement." The Technician advisory grouop, consisting of knowledgeable academics, professional journalists and perhaps non-employee students would be to critique the paper, including everything from coverage to content to design to writing to editing and even mission. It would make recommendations to the student staff and the Student Media Board of Directors. The minutes of this group would be published online. It would supplement the advice given by the writing coaches and adviser. The role of this group would be strictly advisory unless the recommendations were adopted by the student staff or the NCSU Student Media Board of Directors. It's another way to build relationships with the professional media in our area and the academic community. Josh Harrell said he thought this was a good idea as long as the group's role was advisory.

REPORTS

1. Agromeck CLICK HERE
2. Americana CLICK HERE
3. The Nubian Message CLICK HERE

No report was submitted in advance, but at the meeting Al McArthur said he had fewer than 30 staff members at this point and had training with Dick Reavis an instructor in the English Department and Toni Thorpe of the African-American Culture Center. "They helped substantially." He said the staff expected to have a new copy editor at the change of the semester. And the staff's goal of having 12 articles per issue seems to be met consitently. He said priority goals include getting more ads and focusing on copy editing.

4. Technician CLICK HERE

There was some discussion of a recent ethical issue in the newsroom, the publication of the name of a student tennis player who was allegedly a victim of a sex crime. Because both students involved were men, it could not be considered "rape." The staff spent considerable time getting police reports, copies of warrants and talking with students and coaches. They elcted not to publish the alleged victim's name even though it was public record and continue to follow the story.

5. Windhover CLICK HERE
6. WKNC 88.1fm CLICK HERE
7. Society for Collegiate Journalists CLICK HERE
8. Budget update CLICK HERE

Before the close of the meeting, Phil Zachary applauded the student groups. He said it's "really remarkable" what they are accomplishing. He noted the awards that the staff members won recently are validation of that, but that they should also hear it from this Board as well.

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

ADJOURN

The meeting adjourned at 7:45 p.m.

 

REPORTS
Due by Nov. 2 at noon

AGROMECK
(submitted by Mary Beth Hamrick, editor)

Budget
To date, the Agromeck has made $12,000 in advertising. However, we have not met projected book sales which could result in a budget cut.

Personnel
Now that we are into the full swing of things, we have a staff of close to ten that we can count on to write and design on a regular basis. They are mostly freshmen, which can be seen as good or bad, depending on the way you look at it. On one hand, freshmen are inexperienced but on the other, they have more free time to commit to the Agromeck.

Production Schedule
The staff submitted 48 pages to the plant on Oct. 19. This is the first time the Agromeck has met a deadline since I have been on staff, if my memory is correct. We are currently working on the next deadline of 40 pages due to the plant on Nov. 30.

Visit us online at ncsu.edu/agromeck.

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AMERICANA

NO REPORT

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NUBIAN MESSAGE
(Submitted by Al McArthur, editor)

NO REPORT

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TECHNICIAN
(submitted by Josh Harrell, editor)

Recruitment/Retention
Deputy News Editor Tabitha Earp resigned in October after discussions on how her overall attitude was affecting the office. We hired Chris Allred to take her place and after two weeks of training, he is now working nights on his own. This month I will be looking for applications for any editor changeovers for next semester. I've set the deadline for applications for next semester's editor as Nov. 16. Only those editors who have people applying against them will have to turn in a new application.

Progress on goals
After attending, and having success at, recruiting events at the beginning of the year, including New Student Orientation and Convocation and holding a Technician Open House, the Technician staff failed to visit intro classes at each college. Editors spoke in front of intro journalism, English and communication classes, but did not do so at other colleges.
We have continued giving out staff awards each month and have paired younger employees with more experienced ones, but did not hold an entire staff training session in October. I plan on having an accuracy and fact-checking training session this month.

Training/Awards
Technician sent six employees to the annual ACP Convention. The Convention was held in D.C. and the students attended a number of classes ranging from new technology training, to help with writing and career development. Employees Katie Graf and Matt Moore received individual awards at the Convention. Graf won national first place for one of her front page designs and Moore won honorable mention in a national photo contest.

Ethical issues
The newspaper has come under heat for incorrect facts in both news and editorial pieces. I have worked over the past few weeks to contact the people who report the errors, many of whom have not been as helpful as I hoped. We've also started a stronger push to research editorials completely separate from the news stories they relate to. It has worked well this week and we'll continue to monitor it throughout the rest of the semester.

Budget cuts
Because the actual, realized income of the Technician is drastically below where it should be, we've been forced to make some cuts to our budget. We decided to cut the following items:

• the basketball "Red" special issue (~$2,500)
• one opinion writer, as we had budgeted for three (~$1,500)
• capping the Technician grant for the year ($2,000)
• monies designated for coverage of a football bowl game ($1,000)
• monies designated for coverage of the men's and women's basketball ACC Tournaments ($330)

Those equal up to about $8,000 that we've cut. In addition, we will scale back the page count to eight pages, unless advertising can truly pay for additional pages. This way we won't be losing any money to production. We'll evaluate this situation weekly.

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WINDHOVER
(submitted by Joe Wright and Hannah Richardson, co-editors)

The Windhover team has been working on our advertising strategy for the upcoming months. Our focus has been on the Open Mic night, scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 18, as well as the submissions deadline, which is Dec. 1. The designers have also begun planning the concepts for the magazine, we've begun discussions with the printer to figure out what is and is not possible this year.

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WKNC
(submitted by Steve McCreery, general manager)

Members of WKNC attended the National College Media Convention in Washington, D.C. two weeks ago. During the event, WKNC was a finalist for "Best Station Promotion" for the WKNC Double Barrel Benefit, an annual event currently in its 8^th year. Additionally, WKNC and the Technician won a second place best of show award for its collaboration on "88.1 Seconds of Technician," a daily produced on-air and online news element.

WKNC was co-sponsor of N.C. State's Pack Howl Homecoming pep rally and concert on Oct. 26. That day, concert headliners The Avett Brothers performed a live in-studio concert and interview at WKNC, utilizing the new WKNC "Sessions" equipment. This allowed for us to professionally produce the concert for on-air broadcast, giving it a better mixed sound. WKNC deejays also were able to secure stage time during both the pep-rally and concert to promote the radio station and introduce bands.

WKNC music director Kelly Reid personally attended the College Music Journal's annual CMJ Music Conference in New York City in October. As the only college radio rep from the south, Kelly represented WKNC professionally and with productive results on both the networking and business side. Directly from this event, Kelly secured a marketing sponsorship from Virgin Mobile resulting in $1,100 in revenue for WKNC. Kelly personally funded her entire CMJ trip. Based on the importance of WKNC being part of CMJ, moving forward it is recommended that this expense be paid by WKNC / Student Media. CMJ is the single largest college music industry organization, and is an important element in WKNC being seen as a credible station in the college radio environment.

WKNC's 41st Birthday Celebration took place on Thursday, Nov. 1 at Tir Na Nog Irish Pub. Coinciding with WKNC Local Band night, the event featured live music by Bombadill, free food, ticket and merchandise giveaways, and a free cell phone courtesy of Virgin Mobil. Virgin Mobil was a sponsor of the event.

Shack-a-Thon update : WKNC was involved in NC State Habitat for Humanity's annual event to raise awareness for those who are homeless. WKNC broadcast live from the WKNC shack for the entire week to help promote the event. The result of the entire event was that $25,885 was raised for Habitat for Humanity. WKNC has been invited to participate again next year as media sponsor.

Production Update : There are several improvements to discuss. WKNC now has sound absorption studio panels for the newly remodeled WKNC large production studio, allowing for this room to finally be fully-functional. This resulted from a direct trade for donor announcement agreement between WKNC and The Guitar Center, who supplied the panels. Also, WKNC production software is being upgraded from Adobe Audition 1.5 to version 3.0. This should alleviate many production headaches that we have encountered due to software problems, and will make WKNC production an overall more efficient department.

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Society for Collegiate Journalists
(submitted by Clark Leonard, president)

Submitted Nov. 5:Due to the multiple obligations of the members of SCJ in conjunction withtheir leadership posts at their respective Student Media Outlets, the organization got too far behind and was not able to carry out its fall event of organizing some events for National Freedom of Speech Week.

Friday (Nov. 9) the group will hold a meeting to start planning for next semester so things will not be left to the last minute in planning and a well-organized event can be put together. We will also discuss the official inductions of Hannah Richardson and Kyle Robb at the meeting, as well as a deadline for spring semester applications.

BUDGET UPDATE

Items of note:

1. The Technician appears to have realized no income for the entire month of September. We know the bills left our office, but have had several advertisers report they have not received them. This results in an apparent deficit of approximately $55,000. To date, we show sales of $133,804.94, averaging $2,916/issue. We budgeted for $2,454/issue so we should be squeaking by. However, because income is going down, as is the average, we are making several short-term cuts (mostly freezes) to the budget at least for the remainder of the fall semester.
2. Two lines in the budget appear out-of-whack. One is a one-time Technician expenditure for a subscription to the Associated Press that appears under Fixed Charges. If this appears not to be worth it, we will not renew the subscription next year. We only use AP material when the paper is at least 10 pages. So far this semester, 31 percent of our papers have been eight-pagers. The second is the expenditure for AdPro. Both expenditures were designated to come out of the reserve account, not operating accounts and therefore do not impact the operating budget.
3. As of Oct. 24
   • Technician budgeted expenses: $120,281
   • Technician actual expenses: $112,720
   • Technician budgeted income: $131,875
   • Technician actual bills: $133,804
4. The Nubian Message has realized no income despite some $700 in ad sales. All of this is for ads sold to groups within the African-American Culture Center. Steps are being taken to collect that money.
5. The Agromeck has realized more than $40,000 in revenue to date, including $12,000 in revenue from advertising and revenue from the Career Guide, but has sold only two books.

From Krystal Pittman in the business office: "Technician's income is much lower compared to numbers from the same time period in previous years. I am trying to figure out exactly why this is. Billing is done at the end of each month as usual. I am looking into the new process we are using with our new software to send bills as well as contacting customers to make sure they are receiving their invoices. The office has received phone calls over the past week from customers saying they have not received their invoices so I am trying to figure out if there was also a problem with the mail. I am in the process of sending out invoices to the customers that said they never received them. University
Accounting has also hired a new employee to help with collections so I am working with their office right now to solve some old debt issues. I hope by next board report I will have some good news."

CLICK HERE for PDF of full report

 

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