CHICAGO HEADLINE CLUB
Annual planning meeting
July 28, 2012
President Alden Loury called the meeting to order at 9:20 a.m.
Present: Alden, Rob Elder, Steve Franklin, Fernando Diaz, Howard Dubin, Kristin Schorsch, Angela Caputo, Jon Seidel, Flynn McRoberts, Abdon Pallasch, Aimee DeBat, Susan S. Stevens, and guests, Mary Wisniewski and Patrick Boylan.
Alden welcomed us to a discussion about what we might do in the coming year. The one definite thing on the schedule is the upcoming charity run.
Steve hopes to do another Scribe Aid with Flynn in the fall.
Discussion of Lisagor. Aimee distributed a balance sheet that shows a profit of $14,659 for 2012, down from $15,145 in 2011 despite the $3,995 cost of taking the contest on-line.
Patrick Boylan brought to our attention the Welles Park Bulldog’s FOI fight with the Chicago Public Schools over information about Local School Council candidates before the election three months ago. CPS has failed to answer 20 FOIAs. The Illinois Public Access Counselor has not acted on Boylan’s appeal yet. He would like to see the FOIA strengthened.
Boylan also requested technical assistance and/or advice for the online Bulldog and the 491 other online communities in the city to increase professionalism. Maybe an event?
Steve said we might participate in Block by Block’s two-day conference at Loyola.
headlineclub.org might be used for dialogue. A town hall meeting might be held.
An SPJ expert might be brought in for a full-day workshop. NOTE: SPJ plans to do something akin to this here in November. Heather Dunn contacted Susan about our schedule for that month because they’d like to do something similar to what they did in Phoenix in May. See HYPERLINK “http://www.spj.org/spjona.asp” http://www.spj.org/spjona.asp
National Survey of Fair Use survey sessions Sept. 7. We’ll try to get people there.
Abdon resigned from the board due to his departure from journalism for a post as assistant Illinois budget director. He recommended former CHC board member Mary Wisniewski become his successor. She is the Midwest bureau chief at Reuters. We agreed. Contact info for Mary: HYPERLINK “mailto:Mary.wisniewski@thompsonreuters.com” Mary.wisniewski@thompsonreuters.com. W: 312-308-8731 C: 312-823-2060.
Discussion of possible programs:
n Patrick: An elections program in September. Northern Illinois Newspaper Association has already done one.
n Angela: A meet-up with political reporters, drinks, Q&A. Abdon will ask several reporters if they can participate.
n Rob: Career survival.
n Fernando: how to build technology for campaigns. Steve: see if Medill will do a reprise of its Knight Center candidate analyses program.
Committee Assignments:
FOI Beth Konrad will help Fernando.
Membership Howard will help Rummana
Programming Rob and Kristen will help Odette
Website Steve will help Jon
Lisagor Flynn, Fernando and Mary will help
Note: the marketing/publicity/social media committee needs help
Other things:
Amy Lee has joined the University of Chicago communications office. Anna Tarkov will do the Job File.
Meeting adjourned.
Respectfully submitted,
Susan S. Stevens, secretary