MINUTES

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2010 • 7 p.m.
Meet in open area, third floor, Witherspoon Student Center

Present: John Bullard, Paul McCauley, Dao Xuan Nguyen, Hank Allen, Dean Phillips, Susannah Brinkley, Mario Terry (late), Amanda Wilkins, Mollie Mohr, Thomas Anderson, Andrea Mason, Caleb Van Voorhis, Bradley Wilson, Jamie Lynn Gilbert, Tyler Duke, Nathan Hardin
Absent: Stephanie Edwards, Louise Bannon, Michael Biesecker, John Clark, Denise Gonzales Crisp

TOUR OF MEDIA OPERATIONS

• 7 p.m. – 7:30 p.m., third floor Witherspoon Student Center

CALL TO ORDER.

• 7:30 p.m., 201 Witherspoon Student Center, Student Senate chambers

NEW BUSINESS

• Election of a chair — Because of a lack of quorum, the group agreed to let Paul McCauley act as chair for this meeting. Andrea Mason agreed to act as secretary and kept the minutes. The meeting began with everyone introducing themselves and stating their personal goals for being on the Board this year.
• October meeting — Members stated which advisory board they would serve on: Bullard/broadcast; McCauley/newspaper; Nguyen/non-newspaper print; Allen/broadcast; Phillips/broadcast. The October meeting would begin with a general meeting with everyone present and then break into the advisory boards. The goal of the advisory boards is to get the senior leadership of each staff a group of people off which they can bounce ideas for content and coverage. The advisory boards, in the spring, serve to interview the candidates for senior leadership positions and make a recommendation to the Board of Directors which makes all final hiring decisions for top leaders.
• Report updates
• Agromeck: Susannah stated that her assignments editor, Kathryn Glaser, resigned from that position but remained on staff. She said she would be looking for a replacement assignments editor perhaps with a modified job description. Bradley gave Susannah kudos for not only making the first deadline but exceeding it with quality pages. Business office: Andrea stated that she might be looking for a new ad representative. She noted that Technician ad sales for the first eight days were only about 20 percent less than they were two years ago but almost double last year, increasing from about $17,000 last year to about $30,000 this year in the same time period.
  
  Technician: Amanda stated that her design editor stepped down for personal reasons. She reminded everyone that Tyler Dukes has posted the training calendar for everyone to access and distributed posters about upcoming training events. Everyone has to attend one training event per month and write a reflection paper of no more than one page about it to reinforce that training is a part of our culture. Amanda also told the Board about the open forum she has organized beginning tomorrow night to get input from any student, faculty or staff member about the paper. And she announced the recipients of the Technician grant: Brooke Shafranek, Kendra Stowe and Mary Spears. Bradley gave Amanda kudos for having so few late time sheets this past time period.
  
  Nubian Message: Mario stated that Twitter has been a useful way to get information out about the paper. He said they are personally handing out papers. And he said they can use photographers.
  
  Windhover: Mollie said she was starting to pass out flyers and will be interviewing for a junior designer position soon.
  
  WKNC: Tommy said he would be willing to run public service announcements for other media outlets.
  Wolf TV: Caleb said his report was up to date and that some staff members are trying to have a showing of “The Suite” on Nov. 1 in the Cinema. Bradley gave Caleb kudos for working actively to produce about five news and entertainment video segments per week.

ADJOURN — The meeting adjourned at about 8:15 p.m.

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

REPORTS

Agromeck
Submitted by Susannah Brinkley

PERSONNEL
I have hired five section editors. Last year, the Agromeck only had three — a photo editor, a design editor and some sort of assignments editor. So far, the two new positions — sports editor and promotions manager — are already helping distribute the workload and this new system is working nicely.

These five are:
- Marisa Akers, photo editor
- Amanda Corbett, promotions manager
- Kathryn Glaser, assignments editor
- Brent Kitchen, sports editor
- Kelly McDonough, design editor

TRAINING
I am working with adviser Bradley Wilson to plan a training retreat for my section editors now that the year is underway. I am also encouraging all staff members to attend the training sessions that production assistant Tyler Dukes is planning.

RECRUITMENT
Presence at New Student Orientation and Cates Crawl this summer was a big hit with 83 students expressing an interest in the Agromeck, and approximately 10 of them joining staff. It seemed to be effective. The weekly photography meetings have been packed each week, and we have more designers than we can handle, though hopefully interest in these areas will die down a little bit as the year progresses.
As usual, we are short on writers, but Assignments Editor Kathryn Glaser and I are working to rectify this by contacting the journalism and communications departments.
Currently, the staff counts are as follows:
- 13 designers
- Four writers
- One copy editor
- One ad staff member

REVENUE
So far, we have accrued no revenue. However, I have hired a promotions manager, Amanda Corbett, who is hard at work on a marketing plan for the Agromeck to bring in revenue. She is putting together a small staff to help her with related tasks. Corbett is primarily focusing on a campaign for senior ads, which the Agromeck hasn’t tried in several years. She has set a goal for five pages of senior ads. Corbett is working with the Senior Class President Kristy Craig, the Alumni Association and other facets of campus to get the word out. Corbett will also be in charge of marketing senior portraits and book sales, as well as soliciting business advertisements.

DISTRIBUTION
Former Editor Michele Chandler worked to distribute the 1,000 student fee-funded yearbooks at the end of last year. Most books were distributed at events before classes and exams had ended, but the rest were distributed at the commencement ceremonies, which proved arduous. Next year, it would be ideal if we could distribute all 1,000 books before graduation.

TECHNOLOGY
Most of the technology is working fine. The introduction of an IT specialist in the near future will help with some minor computer issues, though there are only a couple.

THE WEB
I am working to better utilize the Agromeck website. I am working with Photo Editor Marisa Akers and Technician Photo Editor Sarah Tudor to post a “Photo of the Week,” to help with retention and to help advertise the Agromeck.

I am also toying with the idea of beginning an Agromeck blog, where my staff and I could blog about our progress on the book. As Amanda gets further into her marketing campaign, she is going to begin using the Facebook and Twitter accounts to help advertise the book.

Mostly, though, I am just trying to update the site regularly. That is the most important thing I can do for our Web presence right now.

COVERAGE
We are doing a great job with coverage. Since the commencement of this book in April, We have already seen a dramatic increase in sports coverage with the introduction of the sports editor position. Brent Kitchen, the sports editor, is doing a wonderful job of planning out fair and balanced coverage of the varsity, intramural and club sports, as well as individual athletes. Kitchen works with the Technician sports staff to help him to write and to plan stories, as well as scope out writers.

I have also been working with Assignments Editor Kathryn Glaser to plan out two to four items to cover each week to continue our thorough coverage of the school year. In addition to general feature coverage each month, we are planning for a monthly profile of a student on campus. Glaser and I have been working to build up a staff of writers, as well as working with the Technician staff on occasion.

I have also met with several campus organizations like Greek Life and the University Scholars Program to discuss ways the Agromeck could better cover those areas.

DEADLINES
We had a big deadline of 90 pages Aug. 13, and we sent 100. We are definitely ahead in that regard, and the staff seems pretty good at turning around pages. We have another deadline Sept. 17. I am enforcing a staggered deadline schedule this year. Content is to be in and pages are to be done two days early so that there is extra time for revisions and indexing before pages are sent to the plant. This worked during the Aug. 13 deadline, and I hope it continues to do so.

ETHICS/LEGAL ISSUES
Over the summer, I received a letter from a man named “Fuzzy,” about the lack of sports coverage in the 2009 Agromeck. I implored him to look at the most recent edition and I informed him that this was something Kitchen and I were very much looking to improve.

Also over the summer, there were some problems in the coverage of New Student Orientation. Photographer Tim O’Brien and I were kicked out of Talley Student Center while trying to do general coverage of NSO events. Later in the month, I had a hard time requesting some information for the package from the NSO office. Both Production Assistant Tyler Dukes and I have spoken with NSO Director Gabe Wical on separate occasions about these issues, which, for now, seem to have been resolved and dubbed miscommunications between Wical and myself. These miscommunications have been discussed at length and documented.

After a long string of corrections to the proofs from the Aug. 13 deadline, I am hoping not to have to make too many more of those. I will work with my section editors to think of ways to avoid these in the future, especially in regards to photo credits and small graphical errors.

Business office
Submitted by Andrea Mason

Things have started off here at the Business Office fairly smoothly. We have returning staff as well as new staff that we are integrating into the office environment. We held a training session Aug. 28. Former business office staff members Chanon and Kellie came to speak to us, and they had some good advice to share for motivation and skills training. They were a great help because I believe that the staff could easily relate to them and understand their ideas and suggestions. Also, we had visitors from North Carolina A&T come to sit in on our training session, and I feel like we were able to help them out with our exercises and advice we shared with them.

The Southern University Newspapers conference is Sept. 22-23 in Athens, Ga., and it is very exciting! Krystal, Bryant, Ronily and I will be attending. The whole office will hopefully benefit though because we plan to hold an information session about it when we get back to share what we will learn. We will also be stopping by USC Student Media to gain perspective on how they run things.

I am proud to say that everyone met their very first sales goals! As we have discussed and calculated, the numbers are climbing back up to where they used to be a few years ago, and the progress is steady and respectable.

As I mentioned earlier, we have lost a few staff members but have hired one assistant, one ad rep, and one designer. They are all excited to get to work and are all doing a good job.

Also, we have a new contact form. It is an easier way for everyone to type in their contacts through gmail. I will have prospects and contact information for you on the next board report!

Nubian Message
Submitted by Mario Terry

REVENUE
Last year, the Nubian Message printed 1,000 copies per week, this year we print 750 per week. The first two issues included ads from Toni Thorpe, the program coordinator for the African American Cultural Center.

PERSONNEL
There has not been a significant staff change, however, recruitment has proven more effective than retention this year so far. We have approximately 15 people on staff: 10 writers, one layout, two photographers, one interested in layout, and one interested in photography.

TRAINING
I, the editor, am enrolled in English 214 (Introduction to Editing). This course serves an aid to the staff and I, helping us to present a professional paper that’s able to reach all of the University community. Furthermore, I have required the staff, as part of their job description, to meet with the production assistant, Tyler Dukes, regularly. Additionally, staff members interested in photography are required to meet and train with the Technician photo editor.

COVERAGE
The staff, the University community, and I have seen a significant, positive change in readership. I owe this to the relentless attitude towards coverage, which the current staff possesses. The Twitter account is working better than planned; the actual passing out of issues is also working. I plan to continue these efforts in the hopes of maintaining great readership. I will also make sure to retrieve past issues that haven’t been picked up, and bring the to Krystal Pittman, for archival and counting purposes.

DEADLINES
So far, both issues have come out on time. However, a failure to communicate internally has caused us to put out issues that appear to be rushed. In an effort to fix this issue, I have implemented a few ways to communicate in a bureaucratic manner. I have certain people who handle situations based on the area in which I have placed them. I also have implemented internal and external staff liaisons, in an effort to minimize confusion among the Nubian Message staff and the staff of other student media outlets.

Technician
Submitted by Amanda Wilkins

STAFF
All staff positions are filled, except for the Viewpoint editor due to ineligibility of the applicant.  Copy editors have not been hired yet. Five people have expressed interest.  Flyers have been posted for both positions. A managing editor has been hired. There are 19 editorial staff members, approximately four designers, approximately 30 photographers, and approximately 60 writers. There are returning writers, photographers and editorial staff members.

The editorial staff went on retreat to Manteo, N.C.  Bradley Wilson, Tyler Dukes, Biko Tushinde and Amanda Wilkins led different training sessions.  he editors discussed topics, such as:  copy editing, leadership skills, vision and collaboration.  The trip was successful. Since the beginning of the fall semester, Tyler Dukes has led two training sessions: How copy editing can save the world (or at least your credibility), and Going beyond copy: alternative story forms. Two people were interested in applying for copy editor positions after copy-editing training. Sessions were attended by both staff members and students outside of Student Media and were successful. The latest training, Lean and Mean Writing, had to be cancelled because no one signing up by the deadline.

TECHNOLOGY
College Publisher has undergone a shift in online submitting. There are still issues with formatting after submitting online.  Training is needed to show staff members how to correct this. College Publisher was down Friday, Sept. 9.  Before this date, there were issues with the system freezing and columns disappearing briefly. The online newsletter was not sent for Monday, Aug. 30 to Wed. Sept. 1 for unknown reasons. Biko Tushinde has been working on a new online design. He is in the final stages of the design. There have been issues with computers saving directly to the ‘technician’ and ‘photoslush11’ server.  Staff members must save file to the desktop of the computer and then drag the file into the server. The cause is unknown.  The staff is experimenting with the use of Twitter and Facebook. Over summer production, Nathan Hardin used these platforms to communicate with readers. It was used to both ask about stories and give away exclusive tickets.  It was a valuable resource that the staff is still working to incorporate into the work flow.

COVERAGE
Technician’s coverage has been diverse and mostly campus focused. Viewpoint has been the least campus focused, though it is not about topics unrelated to students. Viewpoint has included columns and letters to the editor, and recently has been the location for a debate about religion in American politics. The other sections have maintained a good variety of stories. The Sports section has covered club, non-revenue and revenue sports, as well as popular athletes. The Features section encompasses five subsections: arts and entertainment, fine arts, business and money, campus and capitol and science and technology. Some of their major stories have included changes in Mitch’s Tavern, the Vet’s schools work with red wolves, and the Major League Gaming convention held in Raleigh. The News section has reported on diverse topics related to campus. Ultrinsic and the collapsed jogger have been major stories.

DEADLINE
Our deadline record has been poor. Deadline has been met 20 percent of the time. There are many reasons that account for the staff not meeting deadline. Poor planning has contributed to this, but also inefficient page checking strategies and stories being late and having to be dropped have had a major effect. The editorial staff has spoken to writers about the importance of maintaining section deadlines and the editor and managing editor are working with section editors to improve page checking efficiency. Also, stories coming in at the same time for the designer has been an issue.  Lacking copy editors and other editors and staff members having to drop a lot of things to copy edit stories are also big reasons for missing deadline. Once copy editors are in place, this should alleviate a lot of issues with work load on editors.

LEGAL ISSUES
There have been few legal issues affecting the Technician. The Technician wrote a story about Ultrinsic Motivator, a website that allows students to bet money on their grades, but the Technician uncovered one of the company’s policies breaks a University policy. The company felt the article was unfair and submitted a letter to the editor, which was published. The University Legal Services has sent a letter to the website company regarding its activities at the University and Marc Hoit, vice chancellor of information technology, submitted a letter to the editor, which was published. There have been problems with publishing the police blotter. The sorority Delta Delta Delta and the fraternity Phi Delta Theta have claimed there are inaccuracies reported in the blotter. Campus Police confirmed the reports. The editor dealt with and clarified Delta Delta Delta’s report, however the fraternity brother from Phi Delta Theta has raised issue with our reporting, despite confirming the accuracy of the police’s report. Campus Police worked with Greek Life to change their policy regarding the location in the report. The Technician’s investigation is ongoing.

Corrections and clarifications are noted in the print edition and online, since the beginning of the fall semester. Majority of corrections regard name misspellings. Editors have been asked to recheck writers’ name usage and photographers are required to check all names with the campus directory.

Windhover
Submitted by Mollie Mohr

As far as revenue and expenditures, there is little to report at this point in the semester. No action has been made to the budget to cause anything to fall out of line.

I am hiring the design editors, Jeremy Purser and Courtney Johnson as our main staff. Right now, Windhover’s current activity is recruitment of a junior designer, creating a literary selection committee and preparation for promotion events.

Courtney is graduating in December, so her main focus will be updating visual submissions to the web site and planning for promotion events by creating posters, ads, and other avenues of advertisement with the help of Jeremy. Since Jeremy and I will be graduating this year, we’ve made the decision that it is crucial to expand our team for a junior designer so that the legacy of Windhover can continue. We are meeting this weekend to discuss the details of the interview process, what the job entails, etc. We plan to start interviews this coming week with design students interested in the position.

Aside from the staff, I have developed a volunteer literary selection committee. There are a good number of people interested, so there will be a prose selection committee and a poetry selection committee of about five people in each group. I am trying to balance out the committees with both qualified undergrad students and grad students. So far, more grad students have been interested. We will be meeting within the next two weeks to discuss how we are going to filter through literary submissions on a 1-5 scale rubric. This group will also serve as event planning volunteers. Several of the students are excited to plan readings and open mic nights, and have expressed a desire to promote the book in their classes and to their professors. With the help from these two teams, we will map out the possibilities of doing two readings along with the open mic.

I talked with Bradley and Jamie briefly about taking on Windhover open mic coordinators with the help of WKNC. Because there is a large number of people interested in training for WKNC who cannot, for whatever reason, help out in the areas they want to this semester or year, we are interested in three people who may want to help Windhover by coordinating Open Mic Nights and being involved with planning, recruiting musicians, and production. These three people can work with me, the designers, and the literary committee to increase the presence of Windhover on campus throughout the year.

As submissions are being sent, they are being posted to the website. This week I am creating a Twitter account for Windhover and updating it to the NCSU Twitter page. The dates for Open Mic Nights, readings, and other events will be posted to the website and through Facebook to encourage students to continue to submit their work and to be involved with Windhover throughout the year. The designers and I will be meeting to discuss other forms of advertising the website and encouraging students to submit work through ads and posters. I will be meeting with the English Club in early October to take announcements about submissions and hope to be able to meet with other clubs and colleges so that our presence will expand beyond Design and CHASS.

We plan to collaborate with other student media groups and involve students and faculty that want to be a part of the creation of Windhover by setting goals early on and following through to meet those goals.

WKNC
Submitted by Thomas Anderson

REVENUE
Non-fee income (money in the bank), as of August 30, 2010: $5,107.94
Tir Na Nog — $2,400.00
Regular donor announcements — $1,130.00
Benefit Concerts — $387.00
Promotions — $400.00
Live Nation — $785.00
Other — $5.94

All but $100 of the Live Nation income is from FY0910, but we have already done $800 worth of contracts with them in July and August and have up to $1,000 worth of proposals submitted for September and October.

Sponsorship Sales: as of Aug. 31: $2,600.00 We are right on target for sponsorship sales, thanks largely to the return of our contract with the Carolina Roller Girls and the addition of a new client, The Oxford. The business office has a few pending sales for September, so that month should also be a strong one for sponsorship sales.

Benefit Concerts: we have held three quite successful “WKNC Afterhours Dance Parties” which are the sole contributors to this category. The third installment, which pulled in over $225, is not included in this total.

EXPENDITURES
We needed to repair an audio processor from our transmission chain after it was damaged in a lightening storm. The $2,000+ repair was necessary to continue our daily operations, but it exhausted the money we had budgeted for engineering repair.

We recently ordered promotional materials to replenish our dwindling stock. Nothing major. We are still well within our promotions budget.

PERSONNEL
We hired John Boyer as public affairs director and Chris Cioffi as assistant public affairs director. Both are dedicated to their work for the station, and are very eager to build upon last year’s achievements.

We have reorganized our Daytime Music department: rather than staffing two assistant daytime music directors and one head daytime music director, we now only have one assistant. This new model is much more efficient for communicating with record promoters/labels, input into the system and management of rotation. The newly re-hired head Daytime music director is John Hubbard (who spent the summer interning for two of the most visible record promoters in the country, by way of interest), and the assistant is Jenna St. Pierre. This is not the first change in structure of the Daytime department, as efficiency of a model will change as the staff changes.

We have around 120 staff members listed, but some are not currently contributing, or may not contribute again.

Brian Tudor was fired from staff on June 28.

TRAINING
After receiving around 100 total “WKNC Inquiry” submissions, the program director and general manager decided on the 30 students we had the ability to train, and we are currently training 28 (a much easier number, given our schedule). Students who were not given a training spot were invited to return in the spring. This is certainly, by far and away, the most student interest I have ever seen at the station, and I would not be at all surprised if not the most ever. I would rather include the entire WKNC Board of Directors in the submission review process.

TECHNOLOGY
Several of our computers could not connect to the internet for over a month. One is fixed, and the other still not connected.
Our production microphones are all working well, a point of true rejoice.

Our scheduling software is all humming appropriately, no recent glitches.

I would like to broadcast remotely more often. I was told by an engineer that if we were to purchase a better wireless card, we could do so. (I’m a humanities guy, I apologize for the crude terminology. The card we have now can’t connect everywhere.)

COVERAGE
I am happy to say that we have resumed our partnership with the Technician on the “88.1 Seconds of Technician” daily podcast.

We are exploring ways to make our PSA service known to and utilized by the entire University.

DEADLINES
No real challenges to deadlines, properly so-called. The music staff has been exceptional in its task of reviewing, cycling, and charting new music. (By way of interest, aside from being the foremost authority on local music, WKNC is a “core” radio station according to the College Music Journal. There is a level higher than this, but they are not purely student-run.)

Our production staff is a little thinly stretched, and I would like to consider adding a new position to the department.

ETHICS/LEGAL ISSUES
No corrections, except the occasional FCC violation. These are regrettable, but inevitable. No matter how aware a DJ normally is, there is always the possibility of a true mistake (playing the wrong song on a CD, accidentally playing an unedited version off an iPod, etc.). These are rare, and are almost always faithfully reported to the program director.

FCC violations are technically a potential legal issue. But obscenity violations are almost invariably handed down for really wanton behavior on air. That’s never been a problem at WKNC, and we continue to ensure that it never will be. (A more common concern for non-commercial stations is airing advertisements. Our copy writers are vigilant and careful in their language, so this, neither, is of present worry.)

Wolf TV
Submitted by Caleb VanVoorhis

Budget: We are projecting to get several thousand from housing complexes for running commercials on the channel for the whole year. We have one secured already. We are not going to go over any budget. We have not spent any of our money so far.

Staff :

• Caleb Van Voorhis: Station Manager
• News Manager: Pam Nichols
• Productions Manager: Reggie Dawson
• We have nine news reporters and about 20 people doing productions shows

Training: We have done training on using editing software, lights, and camera equipment.

Technology: Our cameras are out-of-date and our software that we broadcast from is just an iTunes playlist. Once we get more income those two things need to be updated.

Coverage: We are working with Technician staff members to share story ideas and budgets.