Meeting Minutes

Meeting minutes: June 3, 2007

Present: Renee Chou, Meiling Arounnarath, Sue Stock, Peggy Lim, Jeff Wang, Ilin Chen

Our next board meeting will be July 14 at 5 p.m. at Vit Goal Tofu Restaurant in Durham, www.tagzania.com/item/22985

On the next meeting's agenda: the next Media Access Workshop, the upcoming UNITY mixer, the possible high school journalism program

SEE DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES AT BOTTOM OF E-MAIL

MINUTES

-- Members confirmed for attending the AAJA National Convention in Miami Aug. 1-4: Ellen Sung, Shirley Min, Ilin Chen, Renee Chou, Meiling Arounnarath

-- Renee will put a feeler on the listserv, asking who of our members will attend the convention

-- Peggy made a motion to approve $400 for two trips Ellen is required to take to conferences as our national board representative. All five members present at the moment voted to approve the $400. Jeff came after the motion passed.

-- Those attending the Convention will be required to volunteer for a minimum of four hours each. Renee needs to know by June 8 who will be at the Convention and will volunteer.

-- Jeff is going to China on June 24 and should take care of duties befoe he leaves, like sending our mid-year chapter report to the National AAJA board and getting receipts from Ellen so she can get reimbursed

-- Update from Wendy: she sent several auction items on AAJA-NC's behalf to the Convention: four prints of photographs run in The Charlotte Observer and items from the Charlotte O.'s style editor -- a wine tasting package, a spa package, perfume, Nova skin care system. She also got the Charlotte O. to pay for mailing espenses for all the items.

-- Renee e-mailed the National AAJA board an update of what our chapter has done since March 2006. Each chapter has to submit their update to be included in the program booklet at Convention. Renee said, judging from the other entries, our chapter looks busy!

-- Update from Christine Long: The letterhead and stationary look great!Ê The Charlotte O. had agreed in-kind to print only a certain amount of our letterheads. And asking them to print the envelopes too would be too much. Sue will ask Melanie Sill of The N&O about paying for the remaining cost of printing the letterheads.

-- UNITY: update from Meiling and Sue -- the last UNITY-type event on Latino and black media issues had few attendees

-- Next UNITY mixer discussion: our first one at the Raleigh Times in July 2006 was such a huge success that we should hold another mid-July mixer in downtown Raleigh. Or we can hold it in mid-August, depending on response from other UNITY groups and on venue availability. The AAJA board is leaning toward Yancy's on Fayetteville Street. Meiling will call Yancy's for cost and if they'll provide food, then will send feeler e-mail to other UNITY group heads about their opinion and if they have other suggestions.

-- Renee will ask Shirley about NBC sponsoring the next UNITY mixer. Ilin will ask News 14 and Time Warner Cable about contributing $100-$150 to the next UNITY mixer

-- Membership: right now we have 18 paid members, but we should be at 25 paid members

-- By the end of June, each board member should contact two past or potential members and encourage them to become active in our chapter. Excite them by telling them about our successful events, Convention, etc. We need to ask them if they want to be added to our listserv and send Renee their e-mail addresses so she can add them.

-- Peggy will reach out to Liane O'Neil (spl?), a new reporter at the Asheville Citizen-Times, and Takaaki Iwabu, photographer at The N&O

-- Sue will reach out to the new South Asian guy in The N&O sports department and Keung Hui, education reporter at The N&O. She'll ask Wendy to reach out to any Asian-American people at the Charlotte O.

-- Meiling will reach out to Kim Storeygard, page designer at The N&O, and Christine Nguyen, photographer at The Durham Herald-Sun

-- Ellen will reach out to Monica Chen, a reporter near Charlotte who was our chapter secretary last year

-- Renee will reach out to all the new broadcast people in Charlotte and possibly Asheville.

-- General membership meeting: we will plan to have one at the end of August for both working journalists and students, since students will be in town and not yet loaded with exams and assignments. Should be a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, from 1 to 4 p.m.-ish. Venue suggestions: at a park with a gazebo and grill, at a restaurant, Sue and Javi's house (Javi is a mean griller)

-- Update from Shaheen on student recruitment: Most of the area colleges start up around Aug. 20. She had an idea for a career fair or a student critique session -- invite various members of the media to come out to critique cover letters, resumes and clips; give advice; hold panels

-- Should we make the student critique session UNITY-wide? We'd like to hold it in late-September or early-October. Should we ask students to pre-register for the event so we can better estimate food cost and amount? Ask Shaheen to find possible listservs to advertise the session, like UNC J-School listservs, to find possible venues and to find other ways of contacting journalism students.

-- Jeff will e-mail ALL of the board members very specific instructions on how to access our info@aajanc.org e-mail, including the URL to use to get to the e-mail and the login name and password to access the e-mails.

-- Jeff will show us how to set up our info@aajnc.org e-mail to receive online submissions from students registering for our student critique session.

-- Next Media Access Workshop: Renee will talk to Wendy about taking our next workshop to Charlotte. We could let Wendy, Theo and Christine Long take the lead on it.

-- Renee had a preliminary idea of AAJA-NC holding a high school journalism camp/event with different tracks for both print and broadcast. It would be very hands-on, interactive and include tours of the newsroom and studio. We could take applications or ask high school journalism teachers or counselors to recommend students. Should we focus only on Wake County high schools for now? If that's the case, should we only take two from each school?

Renee will ask Shaheen for her opinion and help on this. Peggy will ask Keung for his help on finding students and for his opinion. This would be in the wintertime, after the holidays.

-- On our next board meeting agenda: the next Media Access Workshop, the upcoming UNITY mixer, the possible high school journalism program

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES:

RENEE

-- send out feeler on listserv to find out who's going to the convention'

-- ask Shirley about NBC sponsoring the next UNITY mixer

-- talk to Wendy about taking our next Media Access Workshop to Charlotte. We could let Wendy, Theo and Christine Long take the lead on it

-- reach out to these journalists to pump them up about joining/getting active again in AAJA: all the new broadcast people in Charlotte and possibly Asheville

JEFF (before you leave for China)

-- send out the mid-year chapter reports which are due July 15

-- collect receipts from Ellen so she can be reimbursed

-- look into a park with a gazebo and grill as a possible site for our general membership meeting

-- e-mail ALL of the board members very specific instructions on how to access our info@aajanc.org e-mail, including the URL to use to get to the e-mail and the login name and password to access the e-mails

-- show us how to set up our info@aajnc.org e-mail to receive online submissions from students registering for our student critique session

PEGGY

-- reach out to these journalists to pump them up about joining/getting active again in AAJA: Liane O'Neil (spl?), a new reporter at the Asheville Citizen-Times, and Takaaki

SUE

-- ask Melanie Sill about paying for the remaining cost of printing the AAJA-NC letterheads

-- reach out to these journalists to pump them up about joining/getting active again in AAJA: the new South Asian guy in The N&O sports department and Keung. Ask Wendy to reach out to any Asian-American people at the Charlotte O

MEILING

-- call Yancy's for cost and if they'll provide food for next UNITY mixer

-- send feeler e-mail to other UNITY group heads about their opinion and if they have other suggestions

-- reach out to these journalists to pump them up about joining/getting active again in AAJA: Kim Storeygard, and Christine Nguyen

ILIN

-- ask News 14 and Time Warner Cable about contributing $100-$150 to the next UNITY mixer

ELLEN

-- send Jeff your receipts from your conference trips as our national board representative so you can be reimbursed

-- reach out to these journalists to pump them up about joining/getting active again in AAJA: Monica Chen

SHAHEEN

-- find possible listservs to advertise the student critique session/career fair, like UNC J-School listservs, to find possible venues and to find other ways of contacting journalism students