Journalism Education Association of Northern California
Spring Meeting Minutes
May 23, 2009 at 9 a.m.
Webconference hosted via Dimdim
Present: Sarah Nichols (President), Randy Hamm (Treasurer), Paul Kandell, Don Bott, Margie Bell, Michelle Balmeo, Ed Galdrikian, Diane Honda, Paul Kandell, Greg Stobbe, Lynn McDaniel, Rachel West (Secretary)
I. Call to Order (9:10)
II. Approval of January Minutes(9:10)
a. Michelle moved to approve. Don seconded. Motion passed.
III. Communications (9:16)
a. Don shared that he received a communication from the internet company for the Sacramento Convention. We will discuss it further in Convention business.
IV. Reports of Officers (9:19)
a. Treasurer:
i. Shared categorical details of income. We have roughly $9000 total net worth in the bank. We will be closing our old checking account now that we agree the two judges we were waiting on to cash their checks will not be doing so.
ii. Mail-in contest netted $500or so after all of the fees were submitted. Sarah let us know that the cost is a variable, based on who wins. Many prizes this year were hand-delivered to board member schools, saving us the cost of mail.
iii. We have paid a great deal of the convention facilities costs so far; obviously there will be more costs associated with A/V and other expenses.
iv. Paid annual insurance premium to Hartford. Our premium is $531, but in the last convention year we had to spend closer to $1500. Someone will need to contact the insurance agent to see what we need to do to make sure we are covered. Don will make that contact after Randy sends the information to him.
b. President (9:36)
i. Mark Chrasta has respectfully resigned from the JEANC board. He is incredibly busy with his current obligations and feels that this is a good time to resign since his journalism class has been taken from him as well. Please remove him from your email list. We appreciate all of his service.
ii. CAL-JEC business:Continually researching the state of scholastic journalism and doing surveys that are in regards to the “signs of the times” regarding journalism in California. There is a graduate student at Northridge who is compiling all of the information collected in the surveys. There is a blog, but with limited content. There is also a Twitter account, but often with not much to say.
iii. Congratulations to those people whose students won Crown Awards, Best of Show placings, and other awards through the various conventions. There are so many students and advisers in our area that are doing great things!
iv. Working with Mitch Zeigler from Southern California, who is trying to revitalize SCJEA. He would like to have a history of JEANC in terms of evolution. It would be great if Ed could answer some email questions regarding the evolution of the organization, and then have Don speak to questions related to the last 5-10 years as the past president. He needs the information by next Friday since he is presenting information next Saturday to his group. Mitch wants to really work with us and wants to attend our convention, so it will be great for us to help him out.
c. Others
i. None
V. Old Business (9:47)
a. Journalist of the Year
i. We received six entries with portfolios. Sarah sent a personal note to Lauren Grubaugh who was the winner. There was also a Tweet sent out. Lauren was to meet up with the SCJEAwinner, but there was not even a single submission from Southern California.She received a $500 scholarship check from JEANC.
b. Web Site (9:50)
i. Michelle will be creating aPDF of instructions to people about how to post information and update our site. It will have screenshots and instructions. All board members will be made editors instead of authors so we can publish directly.
ii. One of the biggest issues we have is getting enough content to constantly have updates on the site.Delegation of news might be the best way to ensure that Michelle doesn’t need to be the content creator in addition to all of her other duties.
iii. It would be helpful if we create a schedule to update convention information and news information. Don suggested that everyone with different duties posts updates related to their own area. Randy noted that we need to decide what financials we are comfortable posting to the web.
iv. Michelle is working on finding a better way than what she has to upload PDF information for mail in contest, but that is definitely a possibility for our future contest. She will keep us informed.
v. Sarah said thank you to Michelle for all she is doing. The handout sounds great, especially with screen shots. She has been so busy lately that we are all amazed at what she’s been able to accomplish so far toward this. Thank you!
vi.Ideas for news briefs are: CSPA, NSPA, mail in contest, updates from Steve O’D,adviser workshops, president’s message, convention updates, JEA information,etc.
VI. Continuing Business (10:40)
a. Convention
i. Convergence project meeting was held February 28 with Paul, Don, Michelle, Tracy, and Sarah. We want to have an all-day activity for students to be able to sign up for at the convention. It will be the day before the convention and through the convention workshops. Students will be on the street and responsible for creating their own (with existing skills) story package. There will be something printed and online, organized, with the idea that these students have been to conventions before and this will help further their skills in terms of convergence. Tracy is working on getting a mobile Maclab for student use. This will be organized and ready to go prior to August 1.Sarah has agreed to have a fact sheet on everything planned so far for the convergence project to board members by July 1.
ii. Michelle reported on the online registration. We have a lot of desires for this ability, and there are a lot of special registration possibilities, as well as paying online. If we use a registration service we pay for, we will lose $2.50 per registration, and more if it is with a credit card. We essentially have 3 tiers of registration options:
1. Tier 1: Highest: Online registration service; we would pay for the service. $2-3 per head. We can organize any payment option we would like, but credit card is more. The company will charge us per student, but advisers are still able to do one registration for their school site with multiple student names.
2. Tier 2: Mid level: wouldn’t be able to go back and review registration, and the forms wouldn’t be as pretty, but it would be free.
3. Tier 3: Lowest level: PDF form that is printable/emailable would require us to input the information ourselves. This is the messiest andmost complicated option, but still free.
iii. Ed asked if we should raise registration cost by $5 to cover our expenses for the online registration. We cannot raise the registration costs now because we have already advertised it. Paul and Sarah both agreed that our time is precious and it would be worth the $2-3to simplify the process for everyone. Sarah reminded us that we have paid most of the facility costs, so we are financially sound – if we can get 300registrants. Lynn moved to enable Michelle to use whatever online registration company she wants and use a “tier 1” cost per registration site that will simplify online registration. Randy seconded. Motion passed unanimously. Michelle will have the registration up and ready by August 1.
iv. Sarah wants to send an e-blast on the first of June, July, August, September, and October to our email list in order to remind people of the website, convention blog, and registration options. Do we have anything we should say? Don wants to ensure we have news on our website, such as awards, but also important to have a features/opinion presence relating to scholastic journalism anxiety. He is concerned that the present climate might keep people from going to the convention. He is willing to write something regarding what advisers may needto do to keep their program going, despite economic challenges. We want to make sure to address this so people are willing to attend (i.e. if you have to go online instead of print, we are available for you and can help.) Don will get that to us no later than tomorrow.
v. Rachel gave an update regarding photo scavenger hunt. Area will be around convention center so students can get back for keynote speaker. It should be fun. She will bewalking the area this summer. Sarah may join her if she is available.
vi. Don reports on the AV contract. He has a PDF of the contract that he can post to the Google group.The bid is for approximately $2300. The contract right now has a table, a power strip, extension cords, screen, and microphone slated for every speaker room,but not the keynote room. We need to provide the projectors to not add to the bid for projector costs, and we will need to look at what each presenter needs to be able to schedule them according to materials. Don, Rachel, Sarah, and Michelle can provide projectors.
vii. Don also brought up the need for judges and speakers for the students to write about at the contest. Lynn and Joe Wirt are getting judges for the contest on Friday evening. Lynn is willing to help get speakers for the students to take notes on for the Fridaywrite-off contest. Sarah will ask Karl if he will help with speakers. The speakers and judges get dinner on Friday night. There are a lot of supplies and handouts needed; Don is willing to provide those. Karl (pending approval) can work on the speakers, and Lynn and Joe will work on the judges. Willing judges will be able to register that way online.
b. Annual Contests
i. Revising the name to“Annual Contest,” rather than a mail-in contest.
ii. Greg and Paul have been working on the online categories of the contest we are adding.
iii. Michelle and Rachel arecontest coordinators. Michelle is handling the PDF submission aspect for online rather than hard copies. The difficulty with that is finding a way for people not to fill out the form several times for multiple submissions. Difficulty is creating one over-arching form over all of the sub-forms as an online aspect.August 1 release date of entry forms.
iv. Our deadline is received by October 15. Don raised the question of if we wanted judging to take place at the convention so we can announce awards Sunday morning. Is this feasible?Sarah doesn’t think the award certificate creation would be a problem, as she will have time. But there will definitely be a stretch for the amount of judges we would need to be judging write-off and annual contest concurrently. There isa consensus that we need to be very careful about how it looks for judging purposes; sending these outside from Northern California would be the most above board way to judge this. We will keep this as a submission contest(through online PDFs) that is judged outside of the state. Sarah suggested we loop the submissions somewhere throughout the convention so students can see everything and create an image gallery. Diane is concerned that this will compromise the submissions. Don said as long as we showed all of the selections without editing, it should be okay. The judges are all out of state, so students would know that no judges would be viewing anything without anonymity.
VII. New Business (12:00)
a. Summer Workshop
i. Sarah and Steve O’D went toUNR and met with Jerry Seppos, Dean of School of Journalism in January. Earlier this month Michelle, Tracy, Don, and Sarah met in Saratoga with Jerry and an associate of his, Zanny Marsh. Zanny is the contact for the newly formed press organization in that area. The workshop is coming to fruition now: June 27-July1, 2010 at UNR. This would be a joint venture between Reynolds School of Journalism, JEANC, UNR, and a Reno adviser organization. This will be a camp for journalism students. Sarah will put together a fact sheet. We are not obligated to do anything yet. We have only committed to the idea so far. The camp will be about teaching systems of management, staff organization, work flow, and good journalism, rather than teaching a single software or platform and how-to. The facility is new and beautiful. Students would stay in the dorms and work in the morning and then do workshops in the afternoon. There will be tracks to determine skill sets of students to be placed appropriately. There will be on-site food and social events for the kids. There are multiple computer labs available for students. We have no costs yet, but it most likely will not be a moneymaker. Sarah will ask Steve O’D if JEANC members can get a discount.
b. Google Group/Docs
i. Sarah invited all board members to join the JEANC Google group. This is a great place to upload and keep all of our files in a central area. There is a coding in place for type of documents that are posted. This will cause everything to be simply organized by alphabet. You can use this group to send emails to the entire group, which helps set your own preferences. This will also ensure we don’t forget anyone in our emails. Sarah will send a new invitation to each board member who is not a member of the Google group by Sunday (tomorrow) night.
VIII. Good of the Order (12:18)
IX. Adjournment (12:25)