JACC Board of Directors Meeting
November 22-23, 2008
DoubleTree Hotel, Ontario, Calif.
ATTENDING:
Jay Seidel, Faculty President
Alison Kirkham, Student President
Danny Edwards, Faculty Vice President – SoCal
Aaron Dobruck, Student Vice President - SoCal
Dympna Ugwu-Oju, Faculty Vice President – NorCal
Bhavisha Patel, Student Vice President - NorCal
Timi Poeppelman, Events Coordinator
Beth Grobman, SecretaryNOT ATTENDING:
Rich Cameron, Communications Director
Jacque Thomley, Treasurer
A. Call to Order at 10 a.m.
Minutes were approved with one spelling correction.
B. Reports
1. State Faculty Report – Seidel
Seidel reported that JACC hired a new treasurer, Jacque Thomley, a professional bookkeeper. Faculty VPs need to turn in information to Thomley to be on bank accounts.
2. State Student Report – Kirkham
Kirkham and Dobruck are cleaning up the language on the student election plan.
3. NorCal Faculty Report – Ugwu-Oju
Ugwu-Oju asked why NorCal will be later in 2009 than usual (it’s scheduled for Nov. 7). Poeppleman said that NorCal and SoCal dates have switched places because the district with the latest fall starting date (late September) is in NorCal, and so a mid-October Nor Cal regional is difficult for them.
4. NorCal Student Report – Patel
Patel said some NorCal students had problems because conference rooms were switched without much notification, and that some of the competitions weren’t well organized. Little mix-ups included what to do with the Alphasmarts.
5. SoCal Faculty Report – Edwards
Edwards reported some confusion about awards at conference. Edwards would like JACC to send out the message that awards should not be the colleges’ goals, the education and portfolios are what’s important.
6. SoCal Student Report – Dobruck
Dobruck reported that student Maria Alazai created a JACC Facebook page. Dobruck will ask Alazai to share the password with Cameron, so that there is institutional memory for the password. Dobruck said there were some problems and confusion with contests.
7. Communications Director – Cameron in absentia
Seidel summarized a report from Cameron about switching servers for the registration system. For Morro Bay, an Excel spreadsheet is a temporary fix between going from the Los Medanos server to a commercial server. The final product is a new Filemaker program on a new server. Cameron has got the membership information completed, but has not launched online yet. Poeppelman says it’s important to get this the service running as soon as possible because of the uncertain fiscal times.
8. Secretary’s Report – Grobman
No report.
9. CalJEC Report – Cameron in absentia
Cameron posted his report to the JACC listserv. The meeting in Berkeley was postponed. The educator of the year will be announced at the state convention.
10. Events Coordinator’s Report – Poeppelman
NorCal conference is Nov. 7; SoCal conference is Oct. 23, 24
Morro Bay faculty conference is Jan. 23-25. Apple has agreed to conduct a workshop on multimedia reporting at the Blue Heron pre-conference.
The 2010 Morro Bay conference will be Jan. 22-24
11. Treasurer’s Report –Poeppelman for Thomley
Poeppelman has spent a lot of time working with Thomley helping her get familiar with JACC’s record keeping. Thomley is moving the records to QuickBooks, which is able to keep more detailed, accurate information than in past. The first priority has been to get up to date on this fiscal year’s information. She filed an extension to the IRS for the Nov. 15 deadline, although there will be nothing owed. She had recreate last year’s budget on QuickBooks. A budget handout was distributed.
MOTION: Edwards/Ugwu-Oju moved that the $500 the Board previously agreed upon for tax preparation should go for tax review. Motion passed unanimously.
Poeppelman asked that the Board make Cameron’s priority the transition to the new server with the Filmmaker program, which will make the cafeteria payment plan for dues less of a problem for everyone. (The cafeteria plan, which allows JACC members to include different options in their dues, is confusing for bookkeeping.) No new duties should be requested of Cameron until the transition is complete.
The Board debated whether bookkeeping should continue to use PayPal. It is convenient for some members, but PayPal does have a surcharge. There was discussion about whether the members who use PayPal should pay the surcharge, but no decision was made.
Grobman said that the JACC staff had not been paid this year. Poeppelman will follow up with Thomley on this.
C. Discussion Items
1. NorCal Regional Conference Report – Ugwu-Oju
Ugwu-Oju said everything seemed to go OK at this year’s NorCal conference at San Jose State University. Attendance was slightly down from last year, but we don’t know if it was because of the increase in registration fees from $30-$40, the economic slump or some other reason. The representative from San Francisco State offered to host the conference next year, but JACC has already committed to SJSU. Ugwu-Oju suggested more directional signs would be helpful. She said the keynote speakers on Twitter were “preaching to the choir,” and perhaps the Twitter presentation should have been a workshop rather than keynote. Poeppelman disagreed and said that year it was the most popular workshop, which is why it morphed into the keynote this year. The keynote serves as contest material for the news, opinion writing and editorial cartoon.
2. SoCal Regional Conference Report – Edwards
Edwards said the SoCal conference went well and thanked Poeppelman for solving several problems. Local fires spread smoke and ash on campus.
Edwards reported a violation of the code of conduct by a student. The student was denied the permission to compete in the on-the-spot contests and reported to the adviser.
The keynote speaker was geared toward Latino Press, and four contests were spun from the keynote. Edwards said that some students felt the speaker was racist; Delbruck said he walked out of the keynote.
3. 2009 Mid-Winter Faculty Conference Report – Poeppelman
The faculty conference will take place Jan. 23-25. Apple will present the Blue Heron on Jan. 23 and will bring all of the needed equipment including laptops and cameras. Participants will be using iMovie. Wayne Overbeck will not give his usual legal update; Poeppelman has asked Genelle Balmas to give the legal presentation.
4. 2009 State Convention - Poeppelman
The convention will be in Sacramento at the Doubletree March 26-28. There will be new sweatshirts for sale. Technology will pose a challenge as speakers expect more than they have in the past, but Internet access for speakers is very expensive. Poeppelman suggests speakers planning ahead and downloading materials they need rather than use live Internet, if possible. She explained that we use Alphasmarts rather than laptops because it evens the playing field and because of the expense. Poeppelman got an estimate for laptops and software rental three years ago and it would have been $15,000 day.
Poeppelman is researching keynote speakers now. At the February board meeting, the board will vote on the people who will win the Extra Mile, Volunteer of the Year and other awards.
Edwards said he felt that last year two speakers for each of the five First Amendment Award winners were a bit much. The group agreed to keep award speeches at a minimum.
D. Old Business
1. JACC database - Seidel
Seidel reported that Cameron is in the process of moving the database to the new server and will spend time on the project over winter break. Grobman needs to send Cameron photos of members for the directory.
2. Surcharge – Edwards/Ugwu-Oju
Each regional group now pays $1,500 each to the statewide group for services. Earlier NorCal expressed a concern that it is a smaller group and has less money, so it should pay a smaller surcharge. On the other hand, the work the staff does is about equal for both groups. SoCal faculty, at their last meeting, were sympathetic to NorCal’s concerns, and proposed that rather than recalculate the surcharge, raise the membership cost from $200 to $250 to cover the $3,000 surcharge, thus each school will be affected individually. An advantage of this is that the membership fee often comes out of other budgets on the campuses, and might not impact the newspaper operating costs. A disadvantage of this proposal is that colleges may not be able to afford an increase. Poeppelman suggested that the Board weigh whether to raise convention fees or the membership fee.
Action: The regional vice presidents will get more feedback from members on whether it is better to raise the convention fees or the membership fee. Poeppelman will come back to the board with how much the costs would have to be increased to offset the surcharge, and a proposal for an increase to the membership dues will be presented for a vote at the General Assembly.
3. How-to Manual – Seidel
Seidel would like to create a “JACC for Dummies”-type manual over winter break. He plans to have it ready for the state conference.
4. Student Projects Update – Dobruck/Kirkham/Patel
Kirkham will make the election process her priority project this year. Dobruck and Kirkham will work together to clean up the language they created at the last meeting. She will design a page about the elections for the convention program.
Dobruck said that instead of a three-day Editors’ Camp this year, he will invite the editors ßfrom So Cal to a weekend conference to meet and talk about their concerns. Plans are for a mini-Morro Bay-type conference with about 15-30 newspaper and magazine editors, a couple of team exercises, maybe a short speaker and time to swap war stories. He plans to hold it between New Year’s Day and the Morro Bay conference. (Poeppelman said that Editor’s Camp is on hiatus unless she finds more faculty volunteers to help.) Ugwu-Oju suggested that an invoice be created so that students could get reimbursed mileage from their colleges. Patel said she is thinking of organizing a NorCal editor’s roundtable around the same time, which would include an invitation to all NorCal editors.
5. Grant/Endowment - Poeppelman
Poeppelman suggested that the board look at getting grants, a scholarship endowment for students and other fundraising ideas. Possibilities include having an auction using a non-profit online auction company, asking a Sac State PR class to do a hands-on direct mail project. We now give out about $6,000 in scholarships. She suggested a goal of a $25,000 endowment to take care of scholarships.
E. New Business
1. Addition/Deletion/Changes to Annual Conference Contests- All
All changes to the statewide contests must be done at this meeting.
a. Online General Excellence
Seidel proposed on behalf of Cameron a five-category rubric for judging online general excellence, which simplifies the process.
Edwards/Dobruck moved that we approve the five-category rubric for judging online general excellence. Motion passed unanimously.
Cameron proposed a procedure in which the online GE category would be judged. The board supported this as a good model, but wants to leave the procedures up the judging coordinator to adopt if they choose to do so.
b. Broadcast Portfolio
Grobman said that when she held the judging event for NorCal, there were very few broadcast portfolio entries, and those were duplicates of the individual broadcast entries. The judges commented on the redundancy.
Edward/Dobruck moved to dump the broadcast portfolio competition. Motion passed unanimously.
c. Pacesetter Award
Seidel suggested that the Pacesetter award might not be inclusive to those schools that don’t have a traditional newspaper, or that are thinking about switching from a print weekly or bi-weekly to another format such as a monthly news magazine or online only. After discussion, the board decided to leave the Pacesetter as it is now, and revisit this in the future.
d. General Excellence
Grobman said that the General Excellence award is set at a score of 70 percent, what is traditionally considered a “C.” At NorCal, there were 21 entries and 19 of those received GE. She suggested that a 70 percent ranking was low, and that the board should consider a cutoff at least at 75 percent. The board discussed this, but decided to leave the criteria at 70 percent.
e. Bring-ins
Poeppelman suggested that we add a bring-in multi-media contest, which would use SoundSlides or a similar program. The contest guidelines need to be written, but they would be similar to last year’s on-the-spot Team Feature 2.0.
Edwards/Dobruck moved that we add a bring-in multi-media contest. The motion passed unanimously.
Poeppelman will get her team on it.” The board agreed that it should be open ended, rather than on an assigned topic.
f. Design
Poeppelman suggested that we do the traditional layout/news judgment contest, with all contestants doing a dummy layout. The top five to ten would recreate it using InDesign, then we have two awards: a people’s choice and a critic’s choice. The exact number of entries would depend on the amount of equipment we have.
2. Regional (NorCal) judging processes. – Grobman/Edwards
Grobman and Edwards were the regional judging coordinators and talked about some of the problems and complications involved. One issue was the number of entries that were disqualified at NorCal. Poeppelman suggested that at State there could be a workshop explaining how to prepare entries; Edwards volunteered to present the session. At that time we could also recruit people interested in being judges for regional competitions. The board said that the coordinators need to be stricter on following the rules, and someone volunteered Grobman to make a PDF checklist on how to prepare entries to be posted on the JACC Web site.
Poeppelman said that at the Morro Bay conference, we'll sort entries and let advisers who are there fix their entries if there are problems.
Edwards suggested that we get rid of video entries and use another format.
Kirkham/Dobruck moved to eliminate VHS entries. Motion carried unanimously.
Edwards will consult with statewide judges on the best format to use.
The student board members discussed the importance of comments on each entry. A suggestion to create a new comment sheet with boxes to check off might make the comment gathering process easier for the judges. Boxes will allow overwhelmed judges to just make a check mark if they aren’t able to write a comment, and students will get at least some information about their entry, and will know that the entry was not overlooked. Poeppelman will send a sample comment sheet to Kirkham, who will finalize it and send it to the board for approval.
Grobman was commended on the statistical information sheet she prepared on the NorCal judging process for the NorCal program, and Poeppelman said she planned to have a similar one in the state program.
3. Announcement/Guidelines for Competitions - Seidel
The board discussed whether guidelines are being followed equally, based on a concern brought up by Allen Lovelace. For example, one competition has a cheat sheet for tips on how to use the Alphasmarts. Poeppelman said there is a system set up which includes a prepared handout for proctors.
4. Delegate Registration Flexibility – Seidel
Seidel brought up whether there should be flexibility in delegate registration, because of an issue at SoCal. A JACC member school was unable to pay its dues on time when it found out it was a finalist for another organization’s award and needed to pay for that membership. An adviser from another school asked that the first school have a break on its late fees. The board discussed this issue and took no action, stating that all members must pay their fees on time.
5. Plagiarism – Edwards
The board discussed how to deal with plagiarism and cheating, and if rules should be statewide or college wide. There is talk about making a statewide policy, however a legal opinion is that it should be district wide. Poeppelman suggested drafting a letter to Jack Scott, the new statewide chancellor, for our February meeting, about our concern over a statewide plagiarism policy, and how it would relate to college newspapers. We could then bring it to the General Assembly in March for a vote. The board thinks that instructors should have the support of their district to do what they feel is best. Instructors should have options for punishment. Edwards said he would “own” this project.
F. Tour/Adjournment
Edwards/Dobruck moved to adjourn the meeting to tour the hotel as a potential convention site. The next board meeting will be Jan. 7/8 at the Sacramento Doubletree from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. on Saturday and 9 a.m. - noon on Sunday.
