View a complete list of CNJO's member organizations at CNJO.org/members

Minutes of the Winter 2006 Meeting

The Council convened at the Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, Fla., for dinner on Friday, February 10, 2006.

The formal Council meeting began on Saturday morning, February 11, also at the Poynter Institute. Council chair Brant Houston presided. An attendance list can be found at the end of the minutes.

New member
The Society of Metro Editors was accepted as a Council member. Formed in September 2005, the group has about 50 members. Its Web site is www.metroeditors.org.

Poynter programs
Howard Finberg, the Poynter staff's representative to the Council, took questions from the group. Debra Mason of the Religion Newswriters Association observed that when Poynter does programs related to news coverage beats, it would be helpful to network with the organizations that deal with those beats. Mason also said that it would be good to meet with the newsroom trainers' group that is hosted by Poynter. The trainers decide how to spend news organizations' training money.

Howard responded regarding the newsroom trainers that any CNJO group is welcome to send information to their annual session, which occurs in October. He will provide specifics on the CNJO listserve.

On the coordination question: Poynter is decentralized, and faculty members have lots of autonomy. But it is important to tap the resources of CNJO. On beat topics, CNJO groups have the expertise to advise Poynter. Brant Houston made the point that CNJO groups would probably rather be treated as collaborators than resources.

Beth Parke of SEJ asked how groups should make pitches to Poynter. Howard explained that the process starts in early spring for the following year. It's a messy process; everyone has ideas. Last year Poynter decided to expand on its beat offerings. By June they have some sense of what the organization will do; by July it is locked in so the catalogue can be published.

If folks have ideas about what Poynter should do, early spring is the time to talk about it. Beth suggests perhaps building in a little survey of what the cutting edge issues are for each group. Brant said the burden is on all of our groups to be proactive on this topic. Ted Gest suggested that Poynter also make sure that the beat seminars are not in conflict with the beat organizations' national conventions, etc.

Among items on Poynter's list as of the time of the Council meeting were discussions of our struggling industry, and partnering with NAA regarding media consumption. Poynter is looking at how and where it teaches.

Dave Carlson of SPJ asked about what he described as a major shift in Poynter's outlook: that Poynter, in trying to grow, is seeking outside money and in the process, competing with our organizations for grant money. Howard said he knows this is the perception. He said Poynter would prefer to work with CNJO groups to help our groups get grants and in the process help Poynter broaden its reach. Why does Poynter want to grow? To train as many journalists as possible. He said it's a myth that Poynter has unlimited money.

Beth said she thinks all our groups could help push the grantmakers to say that journalism training is needed; to increase the size of the pie. Our society is in trouble and needs journalists and journalism to help save it. It's a hard sell. Howard says Poynter realizes that grantmakers want impact for their dollars. Poynter can help with that. Some funders are frustrated, too.

News University (www.newsu.org)
Howard reported that NewsU has had almost 12,000 registrations. It is offering more than 25 courses, with 8 partners, including several CNJO members. About 20 percent of the market is outside the United States. Poynter is talking about partnering in Spanish. Look for new program announcements in August. Poynter continues to look for other partners on courses.

Brant noted that Poynter still is figuring out a fee structure for NewsU. For example, for a course on how to cover hospitals, the Knight Foundation provided a grant. Poynter was involved with the interactive part, and worked with the Association of Health Care Journalists. There's a lot of potential but online training is very expensive when it is simulation-based. Journalism employers tend to treat these courses like free lunches. He sees charging for these courses as paying the bills the employers ought to be paying.

Journalismtraining.org
Ted reminded the council that all of our groups should post training events on the site. Most groups are very good about it. If you don't have a password, ask Terry Harper at SPJ, whose staff can set one up or remind you of your old one.

Regarding suggestions from the council for changes to journalismtraining.org: Brant said the CNJO executive committee is trying to make the process more productive and efficient. Terry explained that not all of the changes suggested by the council at the August 2005 meeting have been made because the grant from Knight has been used up. Terry said the idea from the beginning was for SPJ to "absorb this into our operation." The Knight Foundation had asked for ideas for 10 improvements to the site. Terry said he would report to CNJO on this via the listserve.

NewsTrain
Mark Mittelstadt of APME reminded us that NewsTrain was created with the help of a Knight Foundation grant after the CNJO-Knight study showing a great need for more journalism training. NewsTrain brings together journalists and trainers for two days, via partnerships with news companies around the country. It's geared toward frontline editors and it includes First Amendment/records access training.

The program is in the final year of its grant. The goal was to do 40 programs around the country for about 3,000 first-line editors. In its first two years it has reached close to 2,200, via 25 workshops. This year 9 were scheduled and NewsTtrain was negotiating for six more sites. The programming has been very successful - they're getting excellent feedback. One major success was the binder that NewsTrain distributes that promotes CNJO organizations and journalismtraining.org.

RTNDA also got a Knight grant to do a broadcast component at several of the NewsTrain sites. APME hopes to carry on with NewsTrain in the future, but expects to get less or perhaps no funding from Knight. Each session is regional. See www.newstrain.org for more information. Program coordinators work with APME bureau chiefs.

Marketing our organizations
Susan Crain, LTV Marketing of Alpharetta, Ga., spoke to the Council about marketing our organizations. She has worked with NewsTrain, Tomorrow's Workforce, and NewsU.

Susan explained that marketing translates to making emotional connections with the folks you're trying to reach. She suggested we think about the essence of each organization and what it means emotionally to the members - why do they care about it?

Three marketing steps each group should do:
Communicate. With donors, partners, members, telling all of them what is unique about the group.
Guide. Help board and staff to have a sharper focus, maximize resources.
Build loyalty. Encourage support, participation, donations by members.

There are different styles of doing this. A group can ignore marketing and just do its deal. Marketing can be regarded as a chore. It can be seen as a way to help do everything a little better.

Or, a group's leadership can take a step back to look at what it's doing, look at the lifetime value of the association, membership, mission over time. She suggested looking at members and potential members as different rings within a circle, from the core group to the peripheral members.

Susan said groups need to define their values, their audience, and their value for that audience. Then the groups should map their membership, see what services are being delivered or should be delivered to each part of the membership. Two-thirds of a group's time should be focused on the core, one-third on the near core. As for the needs of the outliers, she said, the group leadership should learn to say no.

A way to think about marketing is the need for consistency, creativity, and community. You want a consistent message, good membership contact, tracking, and a way to measure what you're achieving. You need to be creative, in looking beyond the immediate tasks, examining your group's sacred cows and discarding the ones that are no longer helpful or appropriate. And each group should seek community - to extend its reach, grow by referral, partner with other groups.

In communicating with members, don't rely solely on email. Remember faxes. One group used faxes to get in touch with members who usually participated but who hadn't signed up for a certain event.

FOI Update
Ted gave a report from the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government (www.cjog.org). 15 CNJO members also are CJOG members. We are still losing the post-9/11 battle for access to information. Paul McMasters from the Freedom Forum says that in many ways, things are bleaker than ever. CJOG coordinator Pete Weitzel would like each CNJO groups to designate a member to deal with FOI issues. March 12-18 was Sunshine Week, focusing public attention on the issue. ASNE administered it.

Dave reminded members that SPJ can lobby because it is a 501c6 organization, and that it is in the midst of a major lobbying effort promoting a journalists' law. SPJ had raised $30-40,000 for it. He talked about what has happened with a new agency, the Bioterrorism Advanced Research and Development Agency, which originally was intended to be totally exempt from FOI and open meeting laws. CJOG and others screamed, and the legislation was modified, but it's still not great.

SPJ is helping other organizations pursue FOI-related legal actions around the country. The good news is that the public is beginning to wake up to the problem.

Beth noted that there are many FOI problems related to environmental issues, especially in the reporting on the aftermath of Katrina. SEJ continues to perform a watchdog function there. Government agencies continue to pressure their scientists to conform to the administration's views on topics such as global warming.

One big accomplishment post-Katrina: An SEJ board member from the New Orleans Times-Picayune had had a task force under way on journalists' FOI experience with various government agencies. Katrina hit, and SEJ released the survey. Journalists weren't getting information from the Environmental Protection Agency on what was in all that nasty water. EPA's public information and media function is so backward that it asked SEJ to help it get some information out. Yet many Katrina-related FOI requests are still unfulfilled.

Beth said that the whole syndrome of PR officers having to be on hand during interviews to vet questions is creepy.

Beth and others said that Sunshine Week is an excellent effort, that people feel empowered working together on an issue. A lot of linking happens, bringing info to the table from various members. With the SEJ report, people jumped on it - it was evidence, not just opinions.

Mark Mittelstadt said APME is working with sports and photo editors about access to events and credentialing issues. They're finding that it's very important to read the fine print on the forms providing to get credentials. More and more, professional sports organizations and the Olympics are inserting clauses about licensing to use photos, about background checks. AP is pushing back.

Alicia Wagner Calzada of the National Press Photographers Association said that photographers have had organizations claim that they own the copyright to the photographers' pictures just by virtue of the credentialing form.

Mark said AP and others had to threaten not to cover some events, and that they had to have some knock-down, drag-out battles with sports organizations.

Brant said IRE does a lot of training on open records. He suggests tracking agencies to see patterns of compliance, noncompliance, etc. He said there have been successes, but that journalists need to keep the pressure up.

There is the possibility of putting together coalitions of groups seeking data, such as IRE, Center for Public Integrity, Transactional Records Action Clearinghouse etc. People are finding they are getting denied much basic information, such as on immigration patterns, being told by agencies, "we don't do that anymore."

The National Freedom of Information Coalition, which represents state FOI organizations, also is working on this issue.

RTNDA has done a video about the first 40 years of the FOI Act and is using it as a teaching tool.

CNJO Member Survey
SPJ has been doing a survey of basic facts on CNJO members, including membership numbers, dues, convention plans, but will turn it over to the council to maintain. It was suggested that questions be minimized in order to get the best response. A subcommittee will propose a new version at the August 2006 meeting.

Fund-raising and ethics
Members exchanged information about their internal fund-raising rules. The National Association of Science Writers science writers take no money from any group or person their members might cover. But their group is not financially strapped. NPPA gets its money from dues and events and from companies like Canon that make photographic equipment. They also sell ads online. It helps to have a variety of funding sources.

Jennifer McGill said AEJMC recently asked journalism foundation directors to meet with them, and it was a very successful gathering. Ted said Eric Newton of the Knight Foundation is trying to do something similar, to get the journalism funding groups together and possible could meet with the CNJO at a 2007 session.
Jennifer noted that many foundations are taking a larger role in directing the use of their grants, in the sense of going out and asking groups to do certain things rather than just soliciting proposals.

SABEW survey on Sarbanes-Oxley
SABEW surveyed council members on their compliance with the federal Sarbanes-Oxley law on financial integrity. Most organizations with a budget of more than $100,000 do an annual audit and should have an audit committee to prepare for that. For smaller groups, a financial review tells you if you're on the right track.

SABEW had three recommendations:
-- groups should have an audit committee
-- should have an audit or financial review every year
-- every 5 years, the audit company should be changed

Hiring an auditor and getting an audit done is not cheap.

SABEW feels it is "maxed out" in terms of the income it's likely to get from its own members. In order to start asking for money from other sources, the group feels it needs to have this audit process in place.

New Business
Geneva Overholser of the University of Missouri Journalism School is working on a project to improve journalism and its public image. Brant suggested that a group of council members work on a list of the things the council believes in. Dave suggests the SPJ code of ethics as a starting point. A code for visual journalists will be tougher because the work is so often international, not just national. A committee will report at the August 2006 meeting.

Katrina journalist relief. Although many journalism organizations raised money for those affected by the hurricane, many journalists, especially freelancers and those who worked for small publications, were unable to get help. The Dart Society, the advisory arm of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, suggested creation of a fund. The Council and the National Press Foundation took it on. Dart raised $12,000 that was distributed by the foundation with the help of the Council. The foundation agreed to set aside 1 percent of the receipts from its annual fund-raising dinner to keep the fund going.

Terry suggested breaking parts of future council meetings into smaller groups based on the size of the groups' budgets.

Beth asked how groups get info to their members from outside organizations.

Dave has a question about how groups elect their officers. SPJ has a delegate system, with each chapter sending voting delegates to the national convention.

Next Meeting
The council heard from Jennifer McGill suggesting that the summer/fall meeting continue to be at AEJMC, which meets this year the first week of August in San Francisco. Mark Mittelstadt urged the council to resume meeting with APME, which is meeting in late October in New Orleans. After a discussion and a straw poll on preferences, the council agree to meet Thursday, Aug. 3, at AEJMC.

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