CHICAGO HEADLINE CLUB
Board meeting
September 9, 2011
President Steve Franklin calls the meeting to order at Bloomberg at 9:00 am.
Present: Steve Franklin, Howard Dubin, Beth Konrad, Kristen Schorsch, Anna Tarkov, Rumanna Hussain, Flynn McRoberts, Brian Pitts, Odette Yousef, Aimee DeBat,.
By phone: George Garties
Steve Franklin welcomed people to the meeting and reminded everyone that the next three Board meetings will be on the 3rd Friday of the month. The dates of the next three board meetings will be October 21st, November 18th and December 16th.
AUGUST BOARD MEETING MINUTES: Approved unanimously.
Steve Franklin mentioned Beth Konrad was meeting with Broadcast journalists who were at Loyola for a special career day event for students. It was important for her to be there to get the word out about the Sept 17th event.
He mentioned CHC has never gotten a grant of this size before so this is a very important event to us. We have secured the Ann Spillane the chief of Staff for the Attorney General’s office and Tarrah Cooper, press secretary for the office of the Mayor said she will come of she will send someone. We also have Robert Reed, director of programming & investigation for the BGA coming. Ken Davis is set to moderate. We are also inviting key investigative journalists to be in attendance to ask specific questions of the panel.
We need to hype attendance because the McCormick Foundation is a big operation.
I think we need to break up the membership list and every Board member take a portion and make phone calls to members urging them to attend.
We have sent the invite to the 1,368 people who got the original survey. We have sent the invite to local student chapters of SPJ and journalism schools. It has been sent to the ethnic media as well as some 300 local newspaper, radio and TV people. Rob Elder also has sent the invite to 70 people at patch.
Beth Konrad goes over the order of events for the Saturday “Opening Doors for Chicago” event. She suggests a rehearsal the morning of the event starting at 8:30 am.
She will start the meeting with a power point presentation. Then Steve will talk briefly. Ken Davis will moderate the panel discussion. Then Ken will open the floor to specific planted journalists with FOI questions. Also Beth is having the entire event video taped to post on the website after the fact.
Aimee DeBat goes over program committee report for Amy Lee.
The Oct- Open Access Workshop will be moved to November.
Also planned for November is the Pulitzer Winners Speaking event which will also be a programming and membership event. There are plans in February for a Blogger Workshop. The Google-plus workshop is to be determined in the future.
Aimee DeBat discusses defining committees and members:
* Program Committee; Amy Lee, Brian Pitts
* Lisagor Committee: Jon Seidel, Flynn McRoberts, Steve Franklin,
Abdon Pallasch and Rob Elder
* Watchdog Award, Watchdog Fund: Kristen Schorsch
* Scholarships: Randi Belisomo
* Membership: Chair Rumanna Hussain
* Diversity sub-committee: Odette Yousef , Alden Loury, and Adrienne Samuels Gibbs
* Ethics Award: (still to be determined )
* Lifetime Achievement Award: (still to be determined)
Anna Tarkov discusses CHC’s social media efforts and suggests members to follow CHC on twitter and FB and suggest posts or stories. Also she urges members to join our new yahoo group Second City Newsies for current discussions and interesting information. Please go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/secondcitynewsies/
Aimee DeBat gave the website reports for Jon Seidel because he could not attend the meeting. Jon plans to update the site with the video of the “Opening Doors in Chicago” event as well as ad photo from the event. He also will be sending an eblast after the event to members.
Rumanna Hussain brings up the a judge’s ruling that Northwestern University journalism students are not covered by the Illinois Reporter’s Privilege Act in their investigation of a murder conviction.
Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane Cannon ruled that Northwestern must turn over to the State’s Attorney’s office about 500 e-mails that Medill School of Journalism students exchanged with former Innocence Project director David Protess. Cannon said the state law covers student journalists, but not those acting as investigators in a criminal case such as this one. The Headline Club strongly disagrees.
Cannon a couple of months ago ruled that Loyola University students working on the campus paper, the Phoenix, were covered by the Reporter’s Privilege Act. Assistant State’s Attorney Celeste Stack said the difference between the Medill case and the one involving Phoenix staffers is that the Loyola students were not working for an innocence project. Cannon gave Northwestern a 10-day stay, time in which the e-mails need not be turned over while Northwestern decides whether to appeal.
The next meeting is scheduled for Friday morning, October 21st at Bloomberg.
Adjourned: 11:00 a.m.
—Secretary Aimee DeBat