March 10, 2009 • 7 p.m.
Board room, Talley Student Center, fourth floor

CALL TO ORDER

Present: Crystal Clark, John Clark, Ryland Clark, Melissa Patzwaldt, Scott Richardson, Laura Laurene, Bob Ashley, Dean Phillips, Phil Zachary, Kishea Phillips, Saja Hindi, Joe Wright, Kyle Robb, David Mason, Bradley Wilson, John Cooper Elias,

Others Present: Jamie Lynn Gilbert, Fred Eaker, Mike Alston, Adam Kincaid, Krystal Pittman, Alexander Dale, Helen Dear, Jane Moon, Ty Johnson, Lauren Frey, Charles Weinfeld, Bryant Robbins, Kali Rogers, Robert Earle

Not Present: Jay Dawkins

OLD BUSINESSS

1. Approval of minutes of Feb. 10, 2009.
2. Budget update CLICK HERE for PDF file
3. Senior student staff grade/full-time student status update NOTE: May require executive session to discuss personnel action.

NEW BUSINESSS

1. 2009-2010 BUDGET DRAFT — Bradley went over the draft and budget update. He told Board members that the budget office had moved back the cycle for turning in the budget by a week with little notice. He said we had just been informed last week that the extension we requested was denied even though the one for Student Government was granted. Therefore, the budget was already due. Bradley has made it clear that Student Media does not consider the budget final until the Board approves it at the April 14 meeting. Bradley will be meeting with budget office staff on April 27 to go over any questions they might have about the budget.
2. HIRING OF STUDENT LEADERS
   • Agromeck (Bryant Robbins) — Bryant was hired by unanimous consent.
   • Business office (Laura Frey and Charles Weinfeld) — Laura was hired after considerable discussion of the strengths of the candidates. Phil suggested that Charlie be hired as a the sales manager to lead the sales efforts as that’s where his strengths lie while Laura could handle more of the management of the staff, design and details of the operation. Business staff members would present this plan at the April Board meeting.
   • Nubian Message (Kali Rogers) — Kali Rogers was not eligible to apply for the editor’s position. Applications were re-opened for a two-week period. The Board will hire the next Nubian Message editor at the April meeting.
   • Technician (Jane Moon and Ty Johnson) — Board members strongly expressed their dismay with the quality of the position papers these candidates presented. The number of editing errors, lack of vision and lack of organization did not set a good tone for the editor of the daily newspaper. Board members voted to hire Ty Johnson with the stipulation that he attend the summer workshop put on by the University of Georgia for college newspaper editors, that he re-submit his position paper in April and that he take COM214 and COM215 during the summer.
   • Windhover (Helen Dear) — Helen was hired by unanimous consent.
   • WKNC (Mike Alston, Robert Earle, Adam Kincaid) — After discussion of three excellent candidates, the Board voted to hire Mike Alston as the general manager.

REPORTS

1. 1. Agromeck CLICK HERE
   2. Americana CLICK HERE
   3. The Nubian Message CLICK HERE
   4. Technician CLICK HERE
   5. Windhover CLICK HERE
   6. WKNC 88.1fm CLICK HERE
   7. Society for Collegiate Journalists CLICK HERE
   8. Budget update CLICK HERE
   9. Technology 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 noon

AGROMECK

(submitted by John Cooper Elias, editor)

Senior Class Council Partnership — We met with Adam Compton, the senior class council president, during one of our weekly meetings to discuss the possibility of increasing student fees so that we would be able to print books to give to seniors for free. It would mean about a $1 fee increase so that each student pays $4 more over the course of their time here and that will buy them a book for their senior year. We would have to be careful about how we word it because we would not print enough books to give to every senior. Other schools do this same approach and it works for them. Adam approached us with the idea, and we thought it would be worth going forward with because it can be something that the Senior Class Council pushes for and it doesn’t just leave Agromeck and Student Media asking for the money.

Adam is working to get a non-binding referendum added to the spring Student Government ballot that would ask if students would support the increase. If it is shot down, we can still ask for it when the fee process happens in the fall, but if we have support from the students then it should help us when we ask for the increase.

We are all cautiously optimistic about this because we know fee dollars are hard to come by around here. We do think a few things are in our favor: Senior Class Council will be backing this and we took a voluntary cut in fees a few years ago and this would basically be just taking us back to the old amount.

Revenue — As of Sat. Feb. 28 we have sold 110 books, up from 91 at the last board report. We budgeted to sell 100, but we need to sell the extras to make up for lost revenue caused by the shortage of ad sales.

Training — The NCCMA conference was hosted at N.C. State and Michele Chandler (photo editor), Antoinette Russell (writer) and I attended the conference as a training opportunity. We all found the conference to be useful to us moving forward.

Coverage — The coverage for this current book is almost complete. Spring Break will be the last thing covered, but we will immediately start doing coverage for next year’s book. We have received the 282 senior portraits taken this year and we are working on the senior section to be included in the book. That will add a good section of coverage that we did not have last year.

Deadlines — The most recent deadline (Feb. 20) was the hardest deadline of the year in my opinion. It was a 48-page deadline, but we were able to make it. I also think some of the best pages in the book were on the deadline which shows the staff has developed over the year. We were also able to produce pages on events that happened just days before the deadline because writers and designers worked well to turn the content around quickly. We have our final deadline for the remainder of the book (51 pages, but more than half of that is ads and index) due to the plant on March 13. This will be another challenge, but I think we are in good position to get the book in on time.

Progress toward goals— The February deadline gave us 16 completed signatures out of 21 in the book (76.2 percent). Our contract stated that we could have two signatures sent on the last deadline and they could guarantee shipment on time. Because we ended up with more incomplete signatures (due to adding extra pages and having chronological pages that kept us from completing signatures), it could compromise our shipment date. Hopefully it will not be an issue.

As we outlined in our Compact Plan, I am tracking our deadline progress and sources used:

Deadline	# of sources	# of pages	avg. sources per page
1	545	100	5.45
2	312	38	8.21053
3	219	30	7.3
4	294	40	7.35
5	101	21	4.80952
6	221	48	4.60417

Deadline	date of deadline	# of pages due	# of pages sent	% submitted
1	09/19/08	112.0	100.0	89.29%
2	10/17/08	40.0	38.0	95.00%
3	11/25/08	48.0	30.0	62.50%
4	12/17/08	20.0	40.0	200.00%
5	01/23/09	20.0	21.0	105.00%
6	02/20/09	48.0	48.0	100.00%

AMERICANA

NO REPORT

NUBIAN MESSAGE

(Submitted by Kishea Phillips, editor)

Revenue — We have not sold any ads or sponsorships since the last Board meeting.

Expenditures — There have not been any expenditures that are out of line with the budget

or put of the ordinary.

Personnel — There have not been any significant staff changes.

Training — I led training for the writers on Feb. 13 concerning common errors made in news writing such as number error and basic elements of AP style. I gave
writers a pre – training and post training quiz. The training was successful in that of the 10 writers and two copy editors that attended, each showed an improvement in their post training quiz scores from their pre training quiz scores.

Technology — There are no problems with the technology. It is working very well.

Coverage — We are continuing to keep our coverage campus focused by covering issues pertinent to campus as well as topics and vents that we feel are interesting to students. This past month we covered the NAACP Historic Thousands on Jones Street. We know from last year that many college students attended this event in Raleigh and that the N.C. State University chapter of the NAACP was an active participant in rallying N.C. State students to attend as well. We also introduced the campus to Derek Oxendine who was appointed by the University as the assistant director for Native American Student Affairs. In addition, we covered campus wide events such as Hoops 4 Hope and tried to keep up with the Campus Culture Task Force by reporting on its recommendations and a feature on “obscenity” law. We also added an alumni spotlight to our coverage in the Feb. 11 issue.

Deadlines — For issue 15, six of 12 articles were submitted on time or 50 percent. For issue 16, six of 11 articles were submitted by deadline or 54.5 percent. For issue 17, five out of 10 articles were submitted by deadline or 50 percent and for issue 18, five out of 11 articles were submitted by deadline or 45 percent. Most of the articles that were late were submitted about a day past section editing deadline which is 5:30 p.m. on Fridays. Only about two article per issue were submitted past copy editing
deadline which is 2 p.m. on Saturdays.

I am working on having students pick up an article assignment earlier and checking in on their progress with the article at least one time before the editing deadline to decrease the amount of articles that miss initial section editing deadline.

Ethical / Legal issues — In issue 14, The Nubian Message cited in the article “Living the dream through service” that Edmon Jones was the director of the College Preparatory Services Program at Ligon Middle School. We ran a correction in issue 16 that Angela Hawkes is the director after Jones notified us of the error. In issue 15, a caption for a photo for the article “ Miss Kappa Xi Scholarship Pageant” listed senior Sherena Thurman as last year’s Miss Kappa Xi, when in fact, she was not. We ran the correction in issue 16 as well.

Progress Towards Goals — We have continued to distribute on time. All news articles have included at least one student or faculty source.

TECHNICIAN

(submitted by Saja Hindi, editor)

Budget — There is still some back pay in timesheets. Although we’d rather not have to deal with this problem, which occurs due to late timesheets being submitted and then processed, this month, the late amount processed was only about $200, as opposed to last month’s almost $700, so we’re definitely making progress.

Also, we’ve gotten permission to continue in-county coverage from the vice chancellor without requesting approval, but have to continue to request it, even though we (the students traveling) are paying out-of-pocket, for travel outside of Wake County.

Personnel —  We’ve had a lot of success this semester with the recruiting committee. We have at least 15 new staff members working in various sections, and this has definitely helped the editors out a lot, especially the news section. Now, we are working on training these individuals.

We also now have a news editor, which has taken a lot of pressure off of both Derek and me. Ty Johnson took over as news editor from his previous post as deputy sports editor. Now, Jonathan Laughrun and Kate Shefte are the new deputy sports editors, in training to take more of a leadership role as the semester progresses and next year.

Training —  Since the last board meeting, the photo staff attended a training, led by Rob Fisher, last year’s photo editor who works at News 14. The staff went over how to record and edit audio for audio slideshows. The features staff also underwent a training on interviewing techniques and lead writing, which former editor Josh Harrell led. The news and viewpoint staffs will also be attending a training March 8.

We also had a student media conference for UNC system schools (NCCMA) this past month and 10 people from Student Media attended. It was well-organized, and those who attended definitely benefited from the sessions.

And we are also continuing our monthly mingle award ceremonies, which bring a lot of writers up to office from different staffs and have more people get to know one another and see the production process as well. At this past month’s mingle, we had staff members from WKNC come join us as well.

Technology —  CP5 is working a little better now, though there are still some problems we are facing regularly. However, the newsletter is getting sent out earlier, despite some glitches on random days. Two reasons it tends not to go out on time always are CP5 server glitches where the newsletter is sent but doesn’t end up in inboxes till hours later, or access to CP5 is slow and we have to send it out in the morning. For the most part, the range of time the podcast is uploaded is either between 11 p.m. and midnight the night of production, or shortly after 9 a.m. the next morning depending on when pages are sent and how CP5 is working that night. As for the podcast, the average time of upload is 10 p.m. and the Web site is then updated with the podcast at 3 a.m. automatically.

In terms of coverage, our online editors Biko Tushinde and David Mabe are doing a really great job working with Fred and the section editors to create online-exclusive content with news and features. The sports staff is also doing a good job of cutting stories for print but running the full stories online for those interested in learning more.

Coverage —  We’ve done a lot with the Focused section this month, especially in regards to the Free Expression Tunnel incidents and the tunnel’s significance.

Now, we are focusing on the upcoming Student Government Elections, including exploring the option of co-hosting a debate. Technician was originally planning to host the debate (with live coverage from WKNC), but after a mix-up with Wolf-TV, we are looking into whether it is still feasible.

We will also be focusing multimedia resources on the upcoming Hillsborough Street Renaissance, as we did with the Krispy Kreme Challenge.

Deadlines —  The staff has done a lot better of a job in meeting deadlines this month. The editors have come in with a renewed sense of energy after winter break, and having new people around the office has definitely helped out. The whole staff feels a responsibility for making deadline, and therefore, all the editors step in to help out at night, even if their sections’ pages have already been sent, just to make sure we make the midnight deadline. In the past two weeks, for example, we’ve missed deadline twice, and both times, it has been only by a few minutes due to a late event in news, so it’s definitely getting better.

Ethics/Legal issues —  We, again, had some issues with the corrections site being updated online. This was the responsibility of the viewpoint editor, and that is now very clear to her and the rest of the staff. To further expand on the importance of this issue, we will be holding a training in March on the issue of credibility for the paper.

Progress toward goals —
Each individual section is working very hard to train more people and get them involved in the newsroom. The section editors are also all getting closer to meeting the ideal production schedule. More people are taking on initiatives to include more of a web-based focus for their sections. Sources in stories continue to be steady, with sports and news increasing their number of sources slightly from last month.

WINDHOVER

(submitted by Joe Wright, editor)

NO REPORT

WKNC

(submitted by Kyle Robb, general manager)

Training- The spring class of WKNC 101 has been completed, with all 23 trainees passing the written exam. 19 of the 23 have also passed their board examinations and are fully certified WKNC DJs.

Personnel – Adam Kincaid resigned his position of program director effective Feb. 8. Robert Earle replaced him as interim program director and has since been hired for the duration of the current administration. The position of personnel director has become vacant with Robert’s promotion. In accordance with student media policy the position was posted publicly and 2 applications were received, we are currently still training and evaluating the applicants.

Technology- Signal issues have persisted since the last time the board met. I have attached a detailed report, compiled by Jamie Gilbert and our engineering team, which outlines all the steps we have taken thus far in evaluating the problem. On Friday, March 6, our engineers will test a 5kW dummy load on loan from Capital Broadcasting, after this test we will definitely know whether the problem lies specifically in the transmitter, or in the transmission line and antenna.

Coverage- WKNC will be broadcasting live for several hours from the Hillsborough St. Renaissance event on Saturday, March 7.

SOCIETY FOR COLLEGIATE JOURNALISTS

(submitted by Kyle Robb, vice president)

NO REPORT

BUSINESS OFFICE

(submitted by David Mason, manager)

Revenue — The Technician revenues continue to stay consistent this semester, while revenues for WKNC and Nubian Message are on target for our end-of-year goals. National advertising has improved this semester and local advertising is steadily increasing. Our focus will remain on increasing local advertising revenues. Total revenue for the Housing Guide (March 12th) is approaching $10,000, which is comparable to last year’s figure.

Personnel — The whole business office staff has stayed intact this semester, which I believe has contributed to our success in 2009. We hope to hire a couple of enthusiastic underclassmen over the next two months, since much of the staff is either graduating or pursuing other opportunities in the next academic year. This will help in the new student business manager’s transition.

Events – The Valentine’s Classifieds were a major success, as we sold 30 classifieds for Friday, Feb. 13th. Most of the business office was able to participate in sales in the Brickyard and we were able to build the Student Media brand with our week-long presence. The Housing Fair will take place over two days – on March 23rd and 24th. Everyone from the business office staff will be expected to participate in setting up, closing down, and taking care of all of our housing clients. This is our biggest event of the semester and look forward to making it worthwhile for all of our customers.

Goals — Goals for this semester will continue to include increasing local sales, improving customer service, and ultimately hitting our anticipated numbers for the end of the year. I also look forward to assisting the newly-elected student business manager through a smooth transition over the last couple months of the semester.

Numbers — We began keeping track of contacts, new prospects, number of meetings, and ad sales for all clients contacted.

Week	Prospects	Meetings	Contacts	Sales
1	3	2	23	$1,407
2	10	6	28	$4,034.92
3	10	7	30	$9,490.64
4	10	4	37	$6,832.64
5	9	4	35	$2,302.95
6	14	3	41	$1,938.00

BUDGET UPDATE

As of Feb. 28, 2009

• Technician advertising billed: $273,155.94
• Technician projections for collections: $254,035.02
• Technician budgeted income to date: $310,752.00
• Technician actual expenditures to date: $212,550.00
• Nubian Message local advertising sold to date: $240
• Agromeck local advertising sold to date: $0
• Agromeck total advertising sold to date: $9,750 (of $12,000 budgeted; 81 percent; $2,250 loss)
• Agromeck book sales to date: 110
• WKNC non-fee income to date: $31,442.64

CLICK HERE for PDF of monthly report

TECHNOLOGY

Attached are the Web statistics for February 2009.

• Sports, multimedia and editorial content drove significant traffic to technicianonline.com.

• Reprints site traffic continues to be driven by multimedia content from technicianonline.com.

• WKNC’s local music marathon generated 21 percent of daily traffic on
Friday, Feb. 6.

• WKNC’s visits have increased by 50 percent and pageviews have increased by 100 percent when compared to February 2008 (see page 9).

• WKNC began using Twitter on Feb. 24 and created a Facebook fan page on Feb. 27.

Statistics for both will be compiled next month.

• Nubian Message‘s visits and pageviews doubled from January to February 2009.

• Facebook is the top external referrer across all media.

(For a description of the difference between visits and pageviews, CLICK HERE.)

ATTACHMENTS

LETTER REGARDING WKNC

To: Dr. Thomas H Stafford Jr., vice chancellor of Student Affairs, North Carolina State University Board of Trustees

From: Kyle Robb, WKNC general manager;Bradley Wilson, coordinator of Student Media advising; Jamie Lynn Gilbert, assistant coordinator of Student Media advising

Cc: Evelyn Reiman, associate vice chancellor of Student Affairs

Mike Giancola, director, Center for Student Leadership Ethics and Public Service

Date: March 5, 2009

SUMARY

WKNC 88.1fm is still operating at reduced power on its transmitter. It appears that WKNC will still be operating at reduced power by the 30-day mark, March 7, 2009. Station adviser Jamie Lynn Gilbert is preparing a request for Special Temporary Authority from the FCC for additional time to restore the transmitter to full operating power. This will likely require assistance from our attorneys at Brooks Pierce.

STEPS TAKEN

Transmitter began muting its output for a few seconds at a time erratically without any fault notification on Feb. 7, 2009.

We reduced power to 10 percent output to stop the erratic muting on Feb. 8, 2009.

Running full system test from front panel on transmitter yielded and immediate failure of the test with no explanation.

After consulting with Harris Field Service, we suspected the problem was the firmware and/or a corrupt EEPROM.

We ordered a new firmware kit and EEPROM from Harris and installed it. While this didn’t stop the output muting problem, it did correct the problem of no entries in the fault log. We now had a SWR fault appear with each output mute.

After a visual inspection of the antenna and transmission line for damage, and confirming adequate pressure on the line, we felt that the most likely explanation of the problem was within the transmitter itself and not an antenna system problem.

With this in mind, a full visual inspection of the ribbon cables and coax cables in the cabinet revealed no damage.

We swapped power supply rectifier boards to eliminate the possibility of a low-voltage regulator problem. No change.

We borrowed an identical model exciter from WRAL to rule out possible exciter malfunction in the transmitter muting function. No change.

On Feb. 18, WKNC adviser Jamie Lynn Gilbert notified the FCC that the station was operating at reduced power. The Board of Trustees was also formally notified on this date.

On Feb. 19, WKNC engineers attempted to test the transmitter’s life support board and master controller board with extra parts borrowed from a local radio station. Despite being told the parts were interchangeable, they were not. For the parts to be tested, they needed to be ordered from Harris Corporation. Former WKNC employee and now consulting engineer Will Patnaud convinced Harris Corp. to ship us both parts and waive a 25 percent restocking fee. If the parts worked, we would purchase them. If they did not, we would send them back and no cost would be incurred. Harris shipped the parts second day air on Feb. 20.

The parts from Harris Corp. arrived on Feb. 24. Student engineer Austin Page had academic obligations, thus preventing him from working on the transmitter until the following day.

• On Feb. 25, Austin and Will upgraded the firmware in the transmitter and tested a known good Master Controller board that had arrived from Harris. Neither of these changes fixed our intermittent transmit problem. Austin rerouted our Web stream signal, thus allowing us to stream audio and continue operations while the station itself was off the air.
• Austin and Will installed and fully calibrated the new life support board on Feb. 26. The transmitter was operating at full power for about 90 minutes before the transmitter began going into auto-shutoff mode again. Power was then reduced to around 10 percent.
• On Feb. 27, Will met with a staff engineer and the director of engineering from Curtis Broadcasting. At this point, we need to answer for certain whether the issue is in the transmitter or line/antenna. The only way to do this is by connecting the antenna to a dummy load and observing whether the problem persists. If it does, it is definitely in the transmitter. If it clears up, the problem is a real SWR/arc problem in the line or antenna.
• Will received permission from WRAL to move a spare 5kW dummy load to D.H. Hill Library, but had to assemble some transmission line from spare parts to plumb the transmitter into it. The parts he needed were at the WRAL warehouse, but winter weather from March 2 – March 3 left ice on the tower and made the parts inaccessible. The engineering team obtained and assembled the parts March 4.
• Our engineers March 5 to prepare to connect the antenna to a dummy load. When we hook up the dummy load we’ll get a good look at the output of the transmitter as well for signs of arcing. Investigating arcing further up the line can be quite time consuming, involving a detailed inspection of the antenna system requiring some disassembly.

The engineers at Curtis share Will’s suspicion, based on the intermittent nature of the issue, that it is still a problem inside the transmitter. However, the dummy load will put this question to rest. The Harris engineer is still concerned about the power supply filter capacitors and is going to have the factory run a test on one of their transmitters to compare to Will’s readings. Given the age of this transmitter, it makes sense that these capacitors may be drying out due to the excessive heat in the DH Hill service area. Two engineers on a broadcast engineering e-mail distribution list responded to our solicitation, suggesting RF filtering problems as well based on similar experiences of their own. Will has left messages for both to see if he can chat with them further.

Throughout this process, WKNC has been in close contact with Harris Corp. to identify and resolve the problem. Besides the person hours puts in by our engineering team (who receive a flat rather than hourly rate), to date only the $357.34 for the firmware and EEPROM has been spent.

It appears that WKNC will still be operating at reduced power by the 30-day mark, March 7, 2009. Station adviser Jamie Lynn Gilbert is preparing a request for Special Temporary Authority (STA) from the FCC for additional time to restore the transmitter to full operating power. This will likely require assistance from our attorneys at Brooks Pierce.