Chicago Headline Club
Board of Directors meeting minutes
Fri. Feb. 10, 2012
President-elect Alden Loury filled in for Stephen Franklin and called the meeting to order at 9 a.m. Present: Alden Loury, Aimee DeBat, Kristen Schorsch, Abdon Pallasch, Odette Yousef, Flynn McRoberts. By phone: Fabiola Pomareda, Beth Konrad, Rob Elder.
Aimee was asked to be acting secretary and accepted. Still need a permanent secretary.
Alden talked about Steve Franklin who was trying to set a meeting with Lori Healey for the G8. Also Steve and Alden met with Mark Hallett of the McCormick Foundation a couple of weeks ago and gave an update on the FOI grant.
Alden said Hallett mentioned that the McCormick Foundation was dedicating $2 million a year (it’s for three years, I believe, a total of $6 million), to support news literacy efforts in Chicago. “We’d like to bring news literacy efforts to scale in Chicago,” he said. McCormick would issue an RFP on Feb. 21st, seeking requests until April 1st. He thought the effort might be a good fit for the Headline Club and the BGA.
McCormick has provided the Headline Club with $13,000 to construct a FOI website and guide for journalists and others. It will provide information on how to reach other resources and provide assistance and how to use public access.
The two people identified for hired are: Glen Reedus, editor of the Chicago Crusader for the FOI guide and social media guru Lissie Schiffman of the Huffington Post to provide content for the blog (Which will provide ongoing coverage of the FOI and media access issues as a part of the website). Alden will be assisting them, but other Headline Club members are welcome to provide content or ideas for the website and blog.
There is a public hearing on access for the G8 conference coming up.
Alden said Steve had responded and will make an appearance at one of the public hearings in March, probably the second hearing. Beth thought it was important to write a letter and that we are on top of this and active as an organization. She thought we should follow what happening in Springfield with the eavesdropping act.
It was decided Alden would write a letter and go on record stating the Headline Club greatly supports this. She said it is important to be vocal and support this.
Odette stated that we were bringing back Burger Night at the Billy Goat Feb 23rd.
Flynn brought up the three day Poynter workshop with Dick Longworth for the Council of Global Affairs and thought we should be a part of it. There was talk of adding a session.
Kristen announced there were 14 Watchdog Award entries and she had secured Tony Noce, Suzanne McBride and Adrienne Samuels-Gibbs to help judge. There as further discussion of asking a few more journalists.
Next there was a decision of having a speaker at the Lisagors. It was voted to have no speaker.
Next meeting is March 9, 2012.
Meeting adjourned at 11 a.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Aimee DeBat