CHICAGO HEADLINE CLUB
Board of Directors meeting
Fri. Oct. 5, 2018
President Alejandra Cancino called the meeting to order at 9 a.m. Also present: Stan Zoller, Matt Kiefer, Jason Martin, Ben Meyerson, Rob Elder, Flynn McRoberts, Susan S. Stevens, and by phone Howard Dubin, Brandis Friedman, Madhu Krishnamurthy, Alex Hernandez, Richelle Rogers, Suzanne McBride, Dawn Rhodes and Mike Ewing.
Board approved September minutes as Susan presented them.
Alejandra nominated Greg Karp to fill the board vacancy left by the resignation of Patrick Boylan and to appoint Greg treasurer. Board approved unanimously.
Alejandra said while she and Greg were at the Chicago Tribune, “He taught me everything I know about money.” He said he wants the treasurer’s job to be simple and transparent. He wants to put into place a structure so someone else can take it over easily.
SPJ sponsorship update: Alejandra said she had a great meeting with other chapters and worked with Los Angeles on a resolution asking SPJ to use the Code of Ethics in approving sponsorships. The conference approved the resolution. Also, she said, the protest kept Koch from having total control over its panel.
Ben said Alejandra “put the fear of God into the national board” and spoke powerfully at the SPJ business meeting.
Treasurer’s report: Alejandra said we have $5,414 in our checking account and $74,209 in our savings account. Greg’s name will be added to those accounts quickly. She transferred a number of small bills to the debit card. Board approved the treasurer’s report.
Paypal: Stan had been working on transferring his lone name from it to current officers, a difficult maneuver. Board consensus: kill that account and open a new one. Stan will transfer the $1,000 in the current Paypal account to the new one.
Membership: Rob said his goal is to be more proactive. He contacted the attendees at the intern program to urge them to join. He will work on members who are about to expire. He’d like to do a CHC T-shirt with a memorable slogan, and asks for ideas.
Programs: The Oct. 27 pivot tables training event at Columbia College needs promoting. Do so. It costs members $10 and non-members $20.
Maya Dukmasova emailed later that City Bureau offered to buy 5-10 tickets to the training. They are happy to give them to their folks but they also want to give us the option of offering them on a need basis for those not in their network who want to attend the event but can’t afford it. She thinks this would be nice to make available for freelancers specifically. So far we’ve sold 5 tickets to the training, so City Bureau could really get us close to filling the space. As for November: Susan suggested having a film screening of “Shock and Awe.” Maya wonders though if we should reserve it for December, which will be even busier for most people.
FOI: Stan said the committee had a phone conference about the Feb. 23 fest at Loyola. Alejandra noted it takes a village to do the fest, and urged all of us to participate.
Fest will be in a new Loyola building. Richelle explains it will be held at Loyola’s Schreiber Center, 16 E. Pearson (directly across the street from the Corboy Center (where we held FOIA this year). Here’s a link about Schreiber.
Lisagor: Ben said the committee is on track to get the entry forms out around Thanksgiving. He will send the board a spreadsheet of last year’s entries. Give him suggested changes. Flynn said he didn’t think a lot would be needed this year. Once again, we were weak in broadcast entries. Promote!
Watchdog: Jason received a new Dreihaus Foundation grant approval: $10,000 over two years. Each year, $2,500 will go to the Watchdog Award and the same amount to the Watchdog Fund for investigative reporting. He will put applications for both on the same deadline timeline.
Website: Mike posted info about the pivot workshop. Otherwise, he has been working to clean up navigation (editor’s comment: huge job). He noted we can use our RSS plug-in for the Ethics AdviceLine.
SPJ Conference: Ben said we were very productive and Alejandra represented our chapter well.
CHC Foundation: Stan said its board rejected the former CHC treasurer’s main motion entirely. CHCF board agreed about Paypal transfer.
CHC board considered each of Patrick Boylan’s motions separately. Paypal transfer was approved. None of the other motions were seconded, so all three were rejected.
Discussion of whether we should have an independent audit. Was left to the discretion of the new treasurer.
Stan said the foundation will spearhead development of an information card to recruit members. Howard will do it. Any ideas: send to Stan.
Matt led a brief discussion about merging our FOI site with headlineclub.org. The committee does not want to maintain the FOI site. He wants to emphasize on the site “how to” such as filing FOI requests.
Bowling league: board approved a $500 sponsorship. Mike noted the league has 16 media teams.
Adjourned at 10:37 a.m. Next meeting Fri Nov. 2.
Respectfully submitted,
Susan S. Stevens, secretary