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Minutes of the Fall 2005 Meeting

Minutes of the August 10, 2005 Council meeting at the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communications convention, San Antonio, Texas.

The meeting was attended by 35 representatives of 29 Council groups. A list appears at the end of the minutes.

New members
The Council admitted the North American Agricultural Journalists and Association for Women in Sports Media as regular members and the Mid-America Press Institute as an associate member. The agricultural journalists group started as mostly editors of farm papers. In '77, it expanded to include magazine writers on ag issues; it later expanded to include Canadian ag journalists. The Mid-America Press Institute, founded in 1968, does 5-6 workshops a year, mostly in the St. Louis area. AWSM — the acronym is pronounced "awesome" — has about 500 members in print, broadcasting, and public relations — and was founded in 1987.

Bloggers as journalists and association members.
The Council held the first of what probably will be a periodic series of discussions on this subject. Brant Houston of IRE believes the blogger "train" is coming down the tracks and most CNJO groups will have to deal with it. Lisa Walker of the Education Writers Association said that group uses the same criteria for membership as it would for anyone else: they must write for independent media as a staffer or freelancer, with a majority of their time spent on education. EWA has concerns about about admitting bloggers as members and to the group's listserv. Occasionally, comments on the listserv will be posted on a blog a short time later. When bloggers have no apparent affiliation, it may be tough to know who they work for. Her group is still trying to deal with this issue.

Representatives of other organizations commented:

NLGJA said it has a "long and rich history" of recognizing independent writers who've been left out of the mainstream for a long time. The group believes that those who make money as journalists qualify.

SABEW has dealt with the issue a lot because there are lots of business reporters who write newsletters and books and work for themselves. SABEW has drawn the line at not admitting bloggers or others that are selling financial advice for profit, as opposed to just writing advice as part of your journalism.

At SPJ, the group tends to let people decide for themselves if they are journalists, and requires only that their primary income be made as a journalist – however they define that.

The NSNC (columnists) group allows people to self-define for membership purposes, but criteria for their contest is strict: only newspaper columnists can enter.

Religion Newswriters said the group doesn't allow people as members who write from a religious perspective. The group has very specific criteria: you must make a majority of your income from journalism, in a general circulation publication.

IRE is reviewing its guidelines on this topic. IRE has regular, associate, and student members. Associates can't vote – they are former journalists or journalism educators. IRE realizes that there are bloggers who may do things like run a journalism blog and also be running political campaigns. This group may also include bloggers who are opposed to mainstream media and plan to disrupt mainstream groups.

The deeper issue, Houston said, is the groups' credibility in the face of the increase in the "pseudo media." He noted that IRE periodically goes through its membership list, checking for those who may not qualify. Another benefit of that is that people in IRE office get to know more about the membership, and it helps in educating IRE board and staff about the current membership.

Lynell Burkett of the editorial writers group said that when members come up for renewal, if there is a question, the organization writes a letter to ask about the situation.

Howard Finberg said Poynter Institute gets involved in this question somewhat in deciding who should be allowed to attend its seminars. He believes that, while mainstream journalism is not going to go away, the small independent forces in and around our media organizations are growing, and that there's some concern about a media "breakup."

He noted there is a Media Bloggers Association headed by Robert Cox. Poynter is working with them in connection with NewsU. Cox "proudly declares that he is not a journalist," Finberg noted. Scott Bosley said ASNE has considered this in the context of the shield law - i.e., who is a journalist and who is not. ASNE's position is that bloggers are no different from the pamphleteers who were some of this country's earliest journalists.

Deals on membership dues
This discussion concerned the experience our groups have had with offering dues "deals" - group rates to news organizations, plus multi-year and lifetime dues offered to individual members, etc.

SABEW offers institutional memberships to any media company where there are more than five people working in business news. The institutional member gets one vote, and each individual member signed up by that company gets a vote. The upside is it's a good way to raise money; the downside is you get a lot of members who are signed up by their paper and aren't active in the organization. A vast majority of SABEW's 3,500 members come through the institutional memberships.

The education writers also offer an institutional rate - 4 members for the price of 3. The system works for larger newspapers. It provides the advantage of giving EWA a single contact in each newsroom, who keeps up with who at that paper is writing about education, etc.

The question was raised of whether groups do renewals all at once on a fixed date each year, or based on individual anniversary dates. EWA has switched to the anniversary date system and isn't sure what the effect will be. Grace Buol said that the National Federation of Press Women switched to the anniversary system and then went back to the fixed date system. It caused all kinds of problems with contests, etc. NAHJ just switched to fixed-date renewals in June. Lisa Walker of EWA noted that, in collecting money for contests and annual conferences, the group bills members automatically for membership. Dave Carlson said SPJ switched to the anniversary date system about 10 years ago to ease the burden on the staff. If the group has a fixed date when membership begins, some groups pro-rate the dues for members who join part way through the year.

Chris Wienandt said the copy editors organization went to the anniversary date system because the group didn't pro-rate dues and it caused some people to feel they were being treated unfairly. IRE does it on the anniversary system and sends out several reminders.

Brant Houston noted that in some organizatioins' staff members sometimes tend to think of members as hassles instead of as clients. He likes the anniversary date system at IRE because it allows the staff to have more contact with the members than if the staff was trying to do all of them at one time, and because it evens out the cash flow.

Chris Wienandt said the copy editors have started to offer multi-year and lifetime memberships, "partly to get rid of a huge stockpile of t-shirts" and other items, which are given as incentives. A lot of people took the 2-year deal, a smaller number took the 5- and 10-year deals and only a small handful took the lifetime deal.

Barbara Cochran said RTNDA formerly gave members a 3-month grace period on dues, but were losing money on it. Terry Harper said SPJ saw the same thing happening, so reduced the grace period to one month. (otherwise, some people turned it into 14-month memberships).

Codes of conduct

There was a short discussion about codes of conduct devised by member groups, and the difference between ethics codes and the rules for organizations, which cover topics like who is eligible for membership, and what sorts of contributions or sponsorships are acceptable.

Scott Bosley said ASNE has a very broad statement of principles, that its members are institutions rather than individuals, and that ASNE's Web site includes a listing of about 70 ethics codes from various news organizations.

Sarbanes-Oxley
Jon Lansner of SABEW talked about this legislation, which changed corporate accounting practices in America in the wake of Enron (and more changes are being recommended). Although it is not aimed at nonprofits, its effects are trickling down to nonprofits because they deal with companies that must comply with the new law and because accountants are changing their ways of doing business to protect themselves.

Also, donors may start asking tougher questions about accounting for their money, when they give to nonprofits. In the short term, consultants are making money advising groups on how to deal with all of this.

One result is that many of our groups may be pressured to institute new practices, even though they are not required by law. Many of them are good practices anyway — for example, stated procedures for how to take in, disburse, and account for money. Other good ideas: an annual audit by a CPA, one that conforms to generally accepted accounting procedures (and that could cost several thousand dollars a year); a board that includes "outsiders; an audit committee, working with the bean counter, that includes folks with financial experience.

Scott Bosley said ASNE decided not to include outsiders on their board, but did expand their audit committee to include non-officers to work with the auditor.

Brant Houston recommended the Independent Sector Web site (www.independentsector.org). He said that, for small groups, many of the things that are being recommended are like using a machine gun to kill a gnat. He noted that some audits take up huge amounts of staff time. Jon Lansner also recommended looking at CFO Magazine for August 2005

Debra Mason of Religion Newswriters said the Ohio Association of Nonprofit
Organizations, an affiliate of the National Council of Nonprofit Associations, holds free seminars on Sarbanes-Oxley and that many other states have similar organizations for nonprofit groups. She said another idea is to get a news company exec or news company finance person onto your board.

Terry Harper said SPJ changed auditors after the last audit. The auditor wanted to consolidate the financial statements of SPJ's 501C3 and C6 arms, a change that would have cost lots of money. SPJ had to maintain its position with its own auditors to do things the way the SPJ board felt they should be done. Many CPAs are spending more time looking for fraud, and charging the clients more. The larger the firm, he believes, the harder they are to deal with

Brant Houston said there's often a real push-pull with auditors. He noted that an organization needs to be active in the audit and carefully monitor expenses.

Debra Mason noted that there are accountants who specialize in dealing with nonprofits. The religion newswriters had to obtain a grant to pay for their audit. She believes nonprofits need to follow the spirit of Sarbanes-Oxley, and show openness and accountability, but to a reasonable extent.

Jon Lansner noted that in corporate America, resistance to auditors' suggestions usually means there are problems somewhere. He said the increased burden of such audits, etc., are being used by some publicly traded companies as a reason to "go dark" – to buy their stock back, stop having to file with the SEC, etc. He wonders if some organizations will decide eventually it's not worth it to be a nonprofit because of similar accounting burdens.

Finances and fund-raising

Debra Mason talked about the funding challenges her group faced and how they've handled them. She said the Religion Newswriters have both 501c3 and 501c6 organizations. The group is mostly funded by grants and was looking to increase its income from individual donors.

They got challenge grants from some foundations to fund their search for more of those kinds of donors. The Association of Fundraising Professionals was invaluable with such services as audio conferences, local chapters, a listserv, and mentors. The group also realized it couldn't rely on its membership for increased income. RNA may not, by its own rules, ask religious groups for money. Therefore, they had a very narrow group of potential donors.

They have started holding occasional open houses at their offices, finding people who are passionate about what their group does, who can be cultivated as long-term donors.

Lisa Walker said the education writers' $65 annual dues do not cover the group's expenses. EWA gets grant support from larger groups with an interest in education, like the Ford and Joyce foundations. So her group ends up writing grant proposals about the things that the foundations as well as the members are interested in. EWA did a strategic plan.

Funders have pushed the group to diversify its funding sources. EWA started its own foundation. Growth in it has been slow but it holds about $70,000, all from members.

FOI updates
Ted Gest briefed the council on news from Pete Weitzel, of the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, on FOI and press freedom issues. Weitzel suggested to CNJO groups that each group have a specific committee or person appointed to follow these issues for the group.

Regarding the petition to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security signed by many of our members about the "sensitive but unclassified" category of documents being kept from the public: the feds have not ruled against journalists, but neither have we gotten a meaningful hearing.

Dave Carlson of SPJ said that the best news on the federal shield law front was that the ABA has come out in favor of it. SPJ is trying to raise $30,000 to lobby for the shield law and is rededicating this year's Legal Defense Fund effort to that. Dave said that Pete's group is doing a wonderful job.

One of the biggest concerns on the FOI front is the June ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that the Hazelwood ruling can apply to colleges and universities. Hazelwood is the Supreme Court decision allowing schools to control the content in high school papers.

Kathy Lawrence said there's another troubling court case involving college newspaper advisors, originating at Kansas State U. She said the KSU advisor was re-assigned over content issues. The judge said advisors can be removed if the college is unhappy with "overall content," but can't cite specific articles as a basis for doing it. The advisor dropped out of the suit, the newspaper editors stayed in. It has been accepted for appellate review by the 10th Circuit.

Brant Houston noted that a group called Saveourmedia.org is making a push to run ads in papers objecting to the jailing of reporters. They are asking journalism groups and high-profile journalists to sign on.

Status/Future of the Industry

Scott Bosley of ASNE led a panel discussing the future of our industry, keying on former L.A. Times editor John Carroll's question about whether or not corporations can be trusted to continue to produce high-quality journalism. For starters, it's clear that the number of journalists employed by newspapers has decreased, and that a lot more bodies at those companies are now in technical and production jobs, rather than reporters on the street. Nor is there any kind of robust growth shown in other industry yardsticks. The number of papers had declined.

Taking part were Phil Meyer, Knight professor at the University of North Carolina, author of a recent book about the news industry, and former research director of Knight Ridder; Rick Edmonds, formerly of the St. Petersburg Times and now a consultant for Governing Magazine, Congressional Quarterly and a contributor to the Poynter site; and Barbara Cochran, president of RTNDA/RTNDF, a longtime outspoken supporter of the First Amendment, and executive producer and bureau chief of Meet the Press.

Barbara Cochran said that broadcast journalism is entering a time of profound change. Peter Jennings' recent death "put a punctuation mark" on that change in some ways - highlighting the changing roles of anchors, from when evening news program anchors reigned supreme to today, when morning anchors may be more important because the morning shows are the profit centers of their networks' news operations. She said it's possible we'll never again see anchors with the same connection to the public that Cronkite and Brokaw and Jennings had.

Some in the industry believe that "people like to watch people," and that in times of crisis, as with the hurricanes, viewers will come back to network shows and anchors who have credibility. Or, it may be that with so many choices, viewers won't care. The absence of the well-known anchors may lead to further erosion of network news in general, because folks like those three were extremely strong advocates for the resources needed to cover the news, and all had huge clout.

TV news operations are not yet seeing the same erosion as newspapers are, but neither are those programs safe. There are now 778 TV stations in this country that originate local news programs, 4 more than in 2003, and the amount of hours of local news being broadcast is at a record level. Staffing is healthy. And the revenue to TV stations from their news operations is very important - just below 50 percent of their income.

In radio, the continuing consolidation of major companies has made a very tough situation for radio journalists. 90 percent of radio newsrooms feed more than one station. The 10-year trend has been toward less news and less news staffing, but that seems to be stabilizing.
Beyond all those concerns however, the real questions about the future of broadcast journalism come from the pressures of technology and declining audiences.
Huge changes brought about by digital conversion are bearing down on TV. Between 2006 and 2009, the ability of stations to broadcast free on the analog spectrum will go away. The government will auction off those spots on the dial.

What will remain is the digital spectrum, and there is no agreement, among networks, cable, satellite systems, as to what system they will transmit on. So what will happen in Congress when people realize they are not going to get free TV anymore? What business model will be viable for TV stations? More and more broadcasters think they will go to the model of news on demand. Cable and network TV have already created an appetite for that - 24-hour-a-day news, using the Web much more across all platforms. All the networks have plans for digital news, weather, etc., but no one knows how it will all work. The network news programs may become video and audio "content providers." The relationships between networks and stations are up in the air.

She noted that broadcasters work in a much more regulated medium than prints news, with "not quite a First Amendment right" backing them up. Recent rulings on indecency have had a chilling effect on what is being broadcast. And lately videotaped news releases being presented as news have become a problem.

A bigger concern is closed captioning. Two Florida stations that stayed on the air during major hurricanes were hit with $25,000 in fines because they failed to provide closed captioning for every minute they were on the air.

Rick Edmonds said Richard Reeves jokingly referred to the working title of a new book as "The Future of Journalism - If Any." The future of our business is what keeps him up tossing and turning at night, Rick said. He's skeptical of the trends toward "citizen journalists and bloggers" and fears they may become the news format of choice for many people. According to a study from last year, only two percent of Americans get all their news online, but that may be growing. The vast majority "graze" - they are in and out of online news sites quickly, and they go to Web versions of traditional news organizations.
Newspapers as online venture are respectable and going strong, he said. The challenge is finding the business model to actually support that. A major question is, who actually is looking at online ads. Craigslist is a huge force in classified advertising because it offers them free. Monster.com has for 10 years been in the business of trying to take the most profitable slice of classifieds — employment ads — away from newspapers, which have fought back. Some of that business is probably gone for good.

Google and Yahoo are enormous companies, with market capitalization approaching $130 billion At a time when newspaper growth rates are something like 3-4 percent per year, those two companies report 70 percent annual growth. He thinks we haven't seen all the cards they have in their hand yet in the news field.
All these things are very challenging to the traditional revenue model of newspapers. The Newspaper Association of America has a 3 or 4 year study going on this. The question is, as Dale Peskin asks, who will pay for the next generation of newspapers? It's not entirely clear that the strongest newspapers now will remain strong.

Phil Meyer said that since World War II, the gradual trend in news has been to go from broadcasting to "narrow"casting, but that that process has now sped up to a terrifying rate. The market for newspapers and mass media is simply coming apart. He said this trend was brought home when he had a house to rent and never thought about putting an ad for it in the paper.

He sees good news after the apocalypse. Existing major news media, he said, can't be counted on to preserve journalism. Current news organization management is focused on maximizing profits during their careers - a "take the money and run" mindset - but with implications far beyond that. Wall Street, he said, forces media companies to look at the short horizon, and keeps them from seeing how they are taking their businesses off the cliff.

"We can't count on the suits and bean counters and paymasters to preserve journalism. It has to be done from the ground up," he said. We, the working journalists, have to create the moral and professional standards to be met, no matter what the suits say. He talked about the firing of Miami Herald columnist Jim DeFede and about how about 500 people have signed a petition demanding that the newspaper rehire him. SPJ in Florida passed a resolution in support. Those actions, he said, were radical, "and we need more of that."

Professional standards, Phil said, "ought to be set among the working stiffs." In part, he said, because there is a "huge demand for marginally competent journalists." All of our journalism organizations, he said, need to think of ways to start ground-up movements to support moral, ethical, and competence standards for journalists.

Phil said he warns his students that he is teaching them about "old journalism," a journalism that doesn't exist anymore, and that they will have to invent the new journalism themselves. He said we have to "keep journalism alive until the new institutions come along."

Old mainstream media, he said, "is in a harvesting mode" - they are raising prices, cutting quality, and taking the money and running. His version of the apocalypse, he said, happens when old media, having weakened themselves so much with profit-taking, are undercut by new media groups coming in that offer better services and lower prices because they're willing to accept lower profit margins - and they're going to eat old media's lunch. And he said there will be a corps of idealistic, competent journalists ready to work for them.

Jon Lansner said the news industry has some of the highest profit margins on Wall Street and the lowest percentage investment in research and development. Phil said that percentage is so low it's indistinguishable from rounding error. He said there's not enough experimentation in the news business. "If I could frame a saying" for newsroom walls, he said, it would be "increase your rate or error" because you're experimenting.

Rick Edmonds said he goes to investor meetings of news media companies and that for the first time he's hearing questions about longer term outlooks. He said some news organizations are pretty well along in defining themselves as news providers across various platforms.

Barbara Cochran said there is talk in the TV news industry about skipping to the "post-cable" platform.

Rosa Maria Santana of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists said the ethnic press is booming. Phil Meyer added that small-town and weekly newspapers are in much better shape than the big dailies. Barbara noted that a couple of years ago in New York City, the No. 1 news station was the Univision channel.

Other agenda items briefly
Russ Shain of ASJMC, one of our meeting hosts, said that journalism schools are collaborating more with journalists on stories and with journalism organizations on projects and research. Dean Loren Ghiglione of Medill described the ongoing initiative by the Carnegie and Knight foundations to inspire innovative programs at journalism schools.

Poynter Institute wants to put more resources into course offerings on beat coverage topics. Poynter would like to collaborate with CNJO groups on this. We will discuss this at our next meeting, at Poynter

Favorable comments are being made about NewsTrain, one of the Knight-funded journalism training initiatives that has been discussed at several Council meetings. NewsTrain is training firstline editors and a cost of only $35 per person. Minimal resources are needed from sponsoring news organizations. NewsTrain is seeking other training sites for 2006.

A marketing expert is being hired to help with the various journalism training initiatives, including Tomorrow's Work Force, based at Medill. We will discuss this at our next CNJO session.

A parity project by NAHJ works to help news media achieve racial parity with surrounding communities. Many small papers are involved. The project helps them to make connections with local universities and other partners.

NLGJA is working with colleges on teaching about gender. The project helps colleges meet their diversity mandate.

The Council will next meet Feb. 10-11, 2006 at the Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, Fl.

Attendees August 10

American Copy Editors Society: Chris Wienandt
American Society of Business Publication Editors: Roy Harris
American Society of Newspaper Editors: Scott Bosley, Diana Mitsu Klos
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication: Jennifer McGill,
Mary Alice Shaver
Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication: Russ Shain
Association of Health Care Journalists: Len Bruzzese
College Media Advisers: Kathy Lawrence, Ron Spielberger
Criminal Justice Journalists: Ted Gest
Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma: Joe Hight
Education Writers Association: Linda Lenz, Lisa Walker
International Association of Obituarists: Carolyn Gilbert
Investigative Reporters and Editors: Brant Houston
Journalism and Women Symposium: Gayle Reaves
Journalism Education Association: Linda Puntney
National Association of Hispanic Journalists: Rosa Maria Santana
National Conference of Editorial Writers: Lynnell Burkett
National Federation of Press Women: Grace Buol
National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association: Pamela Strother
National Press Photographers Association: Alicia Wagner Calzada, Todd Stricker
National Society of Newspaper Columnists: Suzette Standring
North American Agricultural Journalists: Larry Dreiling, Kathleen Phillips
Poynter Institute: Howard Finberg
Public Radio News Directors Inc.: Wayne Pratt
Radio-Television News Directors Association/Foundation: Barbara Cochran
Religion Newswriters Association: Debra Mason
Society of American Business and Economic Writers: Jon Lansner
Society for News Design: Elise Burroughs
Society of Professional Journalists: Dave Carlson, Terry Harper
UNITY: Anna Lopez

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