In attendance:
Emily Tsao, Co-President
Amy Wang, Co-President
Jay Wang, Vice President for Print
Janelle Wang, Vice President for Broadcast-elect
Boaz Herzog, Treasurer
Angie Chuang, Secretary
Maya Blackmun, Representative to the National Board
Meeting called to order at 10:15 a.m.
1. Appoint VP for Broadcast
Janelle Wang, reporter-anchor for KPDX, appointed as chapter Vice President for Broadcast by a unanimous vote. Emily will notify National.
2. Camp AAJA
National would like us to nominate two members to attend this training program from Feb. 28-March 3 (national foots the bill). Ideally, we'd have one broadcast person and one print person, but the program is during sweeps. We need to nominate people by Jan. 18. Jay is interested, and Janelle said she'd check with broadcast people.
3. Funding
The chapter currently has nearly $18,000 in the bank. Maya raised the issue that as a nonprofit, we should not be rolling over large amounts of money every year. Some ideas for using the money for our members include: sponsorship for national board members or officers to attend meetings and / or conventions, and offering funding for our members to attend professional development events, such as ELP or other workshops. (Maya will not be able to go to the spring National board meeting April 4-7, and wants to designate a proxy. We should fully fund that proxy to go to the meeting. Anyone who is interested should let her know.)
There are a number of issues we should discuss regarding offering funding for professional development, including similar national sponsorship, whether we consider ELP differently from non-AAJA programs, etc. Angie will produce a draft form / guidelines that we can discuss at the next meeting.
Maya suggests that we develop some budget targets, and designate certain amounts of money for board reps, for professional development, etc.
Scholarships: We should work harder to find more candidates and determine whether recipients need to demonstrate that they are pursuing journalism once they get to college. Angie suggested visits or contacts with campus newspaper staffs. She will look into this further and bring info to the next meeting.
4. Unity Mixer
Ron Smith of PABJ is asking for about $150 to co-sponsor a Unity Mixer for members of PABJ, AAJA, NAHJ and NAJA. We agreed to fund the event, and it was suggested that we extend a special invitation to local ethnic media reps (Asian Reporter, Skanner, El Hispanic, etc.) Angie checked with Ron and the event is tentatively scheduled for March 1 in the evening.
5. Charlie Minn film screening
Minn, a new KPDX sportscaster, will be screening his film "False Start" at the Hollywood Theater on Feb. 22. We'll plan on attending the 7 p.m. opening night show and meeting Minn afterwards (he's looking into whether we can borrow a space at the theater) for coffee, desserts and a discussion with the filmmaker. Angie is coordinating this with Minn.
6. Banquet
May 10 was the proposed date, and May 31 and June 3 will be backup dates. Noble House was too crowded last year, so we'll be seeking new places. Amy suggested Good Day in Chinatown, which has a flexible space for a large or small crowd. We need to start thinking about how we'll get big silent auction items without help from Randall or Carolyn. We'll meet again in February to do more planning for the banquet. We need keynote speaker ideas; Bo is in charge of collecting ideas of speakers.
7. National Convention: Lifetime Achievement judging
This is our chapter's responsibility for the national convention this year. Maya will set up a judging committee.
8. Other Business
Jay is working on the chapter Web site. Send Jay ideas for things we can put on Website.
Meeting adjourned at 11:30 a.m.