It’s time to vote for the AAJA Seattle Chapter Board officers! This year, we are voting on President, Vice President of Programs, Secretary and National Advisory Board Representative.
Ballots will be sent to the email address filed with AAJA. It will arrive in your Inboxes on Oct. 18. Ballots are due by noon Oct. 28.
Hey AAJA Seattle,
It’s time for the chapter to elect board members for 2012!
There are four seats up for election, all of which are two-year terms, effective Jan. 1, 2012:
Vice president, Programs
Secretary
National Board representative
Serving on the chapter board is an important way for you to demonstrate your leadership (a key skill many employers look for), give back to this organization and support your fellow members.
Chapter secretary Venice Buhain will oversee our elections, which will occur in mid-October. Our national office will receive the names of our 2012 chapter board members by Nov. 1.
FAQ
Who’s eligible to run and vote?
Anyone whose 2011 membership dues are current as of Sept. 30, and is a Full Member. This means those who receive the majority of their income from or spend the majority of their work time in journalistic work (including freelance), those unemployed members between journalism jobs, or those who have left journalism but were AAJA members and journalists for five or more consecutive years. Associate, Student and Retired members are NOT eligible to run or vote.
What is the time commitment?
The board meets at least six times a year to discuss chapter business and plan our two marquee events: Northwest Journalists of Color Scholarship Reception (early June) and the Lunar New Year Banquet & Silent Auction (late January/early February). Board members are expected to participate in these meetings (generally an hour or two) and these two events.
What are you looking for in board members?
Each board seat has distinct responsibilities, which makes it easier for the group to delegate tasks and for individuals to figure out what fits their skills and talents. Of course, the board can decide to change these duties to fit the needs of the group and the chapter.
Vice president, Programs: This person is responsible for the Northwest Journalists of Color Scholarship outreach efforts, judging and reception.
Vice president, Events (seat open in 2013): This person is responsible for the Lunar New Year Banquet & Silent Auction. This person also could organize the summer BBQ, social outings and happy-hour mixers.
Secretary: This person is responsible for the chapter board’s official minutes and elections. This person also could be the group’s social media manager.
Treasurer (seat open in 2013): This person is responsible for managing the chapter’s finances and complying with National’s rules on bookkeeping. This is the only board position that can be held by someone other than a Full Member, i.e. Associate or Retired Members.
National Board Representative: This person is responsible for soliciting input from the local board on issues coming to a vote before the National board and reporting back to the local board. This person is required to represent the chapter at the National Convention.
We will be holding a chapter mixer sometime in the next month. Board members will be there if you want to ask them questions about serving on the board or the elections process.
Oct. 12 is the filing deadline to register your interest in running for a chapter board seat. Send an email to chapter Secretary Venice Buhain, including your name, job title, company and a brief statement (no more than 250 words) on why you’re running.
Oct. 27 is the deadline for casting your ballots. As in previous elections, you’ll most likely receive a ballot electronically.
If you have any questions, send an email to aajaseattle@gmail.com with “2012 chapter elections” in the subject line. Or you can contact one of the board officers directly. Thanks!
Three years ago, AAJASeattle.org was re-launched on the WordPress platform. Happy birthday, AAJASeattle.org!
AAJA should be proud of this little website. It’s an important community resource in the online landscape of Pacific Northwest journalism sites. Don’t believe me? I too was shocked when a research study that came out at the 2010 Journalism That Matters conference put aajaseattle.org on the map – literally. Use the Zoom (+) button below and look at the center of the map.
Data visualization of the Pacific Northwest News Ecology, Jan 2010
Over the years, as the site’s founding editor, I’ve watched it grow and become a part of our chapter’s strategy for building community online and reaching out to members hungry for training, mentoring and jobs.
My vision for AAJASeattle.org was and still is a place for our members – especially students and freelancers – to post their profiles, share links to their stories and offer emerging, diverse journalists a platform to display their storytelling in new media (and maybe get constructive comments). I think it could realize that vision with a staff of three to five dedicated volunteers.
The chapter’s costs to keep the site up are minimal – a server hosting account and domain name – but the content our authors contribute is priceless.
The blog post items, which chronicle chapter news and turbulent times of our profession, come from members willing to donate their time. And sometimes we get photos and videos posted of chapter events.
With no advertising, no dedicated staff and sporadic blog posts, the site has attracted nearly 7,000 visits over the past year (yes, we track it using Google Analytics). We set up the site so that @aajaseattle sends out a tweet for every new post.
Now it’s time for a new editor with fresh ideas and energy to assume the duties and nurture the site’s evolution.
This is a great VOLUNTEER opportunity for anyone who hopes to be a web producer, blogger or site manager some day.
Skills you will develop as site editor:
Recruiting and managing contributing writers.
Tracking and interpreting site analytics.
Managing the WordPress platform.
Skills we’d hope you have or are willing to learn if you want this gig:
Knowledge of any blogging platform, i.e. WordPress, TypePad, Tumblr, Blogger.
Proficiency in editing copy.
Editorial judgment and basic understanding of libel, privacy and copyright.
The time commitment is minimal – an hour a week, perhaps – but you could spend more time if you want to create something cool. Definitely something to list on your resume when you apply for jobs at news websites.
If you’re interested in volunteering, please email Sanjay Bhatt, chapter president/aajaseattle.org editor, at sbhatt@seattletimes.com. Please write “AAJASeattle.org – Editor” in the subject line. Thanks!
Thanh Tan is the keynote speaker for this year’s Northwest Journalists of Color awards reception, which will be June 7 at KING TV.
Get your free tickets at EventBrite!
The reception, which marks the 25th anniversary of AAJA Seattle’s flagship program, brings Thanh Tan from Austin, Texas, to share her experiences with this year’s scholarship winners.
Tan, a three-time NJC scholarship winner, is a multimedia reporter/producer for The Texas Tribune.
She previously worked at Idaho Public Television, a PBS station that serves a statewide audience.
While there, she was an Emmy award-winning producer/reporter/host for the longest-running legislative public affairs program in the West, Idaho Reports, moderator of The Idaho Debates, and a writer/producer for the flagship series Outdoor Idaho.
Prior to joining IdahoPTV, she was a general assignment reporter at the ABC affiliate in Portland, OR and a political reporter for KBCI-TV in Boise, ID. Her work has also appeared on the PBS NewsHour and This American Life.
She graduated with honors from the University of Southern California with degrees in International Relations and Broadcast Journalism.
Mix and mingle with members and supporters of AAJA starting at 6 p.m. this Thursday at Amber Restaurant & Lounge in Belltown at 2214 1st Avenue.
Connect with local journalists
Find out about upcoming AAJA events
Hear what journalists are doing outside of the newsroom
Get involved!
This event is FREE. Get your ticket at EventBrite.com: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1469317769/
Got a burning industry question you want us to discuss? Send your question to Caroline at editor@earthwalkersmag.com and we’ll try to address it at the mixer.
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Help us continue to host free events by supporting AAJA through membership (you do not need to be an employed journalist to become a member).
Register/Renew your membership today!
http://www.aaja.org/membership/join/
AAJA is a national organization that supports diversity in the media. AAJA’s Seattle chapter is a strong and active chapter. We encourage members and supporters to register/renew their membership by the MARCH 30TH and look forward to seeing you throughout the year!
The Year of the Rabbit is underway. And that means time to renew your membership! Our 2011 membership drive is on and runs through the end of March.
If you’re wondering whether you are current on your membership, just look in the far right-bottom corner for a list of chapter members in good standing. The list is current as of Feb. 11, 2011.
To renew your membership or join us for the first time, please visit aaja.org/membership.
We had a memorable Lunar New Year Banquet at the Tea House in Renton. More than 65 people attended our annual fundraiser, including members of the Seattle Glee Club — courtesy of AAJA member Athima Chansanchai (thank you).
And our karaoke contest featured several brave souls, including Candace Heckman’s daughter Evelyn singing “Yellow Submarine,” David Boardman with “All the Way,” Karen Gaudette Brewer and Athima with “Son of a Preacher,” and Sanjay Bhatt with “Brown Eyed Girl.” Of course, Evelyn stole the show, winning the karaoke contest. Way to go, Evelyn!
Our Silent Auction, in addition to dinner ticket sales, raised more than $2,000 in funds for the chapter’s programs and operations. Many thanks to all the donors. Our youngest donor was Peter Sessum’s daughter, Anna, who blogs on cooking and donated a home-cooked dinner.
Check back here later in the week for photos, courtesy of student member Ava Van, who runs her own photography business. Thank you, Ava!
We’ve got some cool plans for 2011. Your membership is a vote of confidence in AAJA’s mission to sustain diversity from newsrooms to boardrooms in the media industry. Your chapter is what you make of it, so if you have ideas for programs or events, please e-mail us at aajaseattle@gmail.com.
Chapter President’s Report
Dear friends,
Happy holidays! As 2010 draws to a close, our chapter has many accomplishments to celebrate this year. It’s also that time of year to renew your membership and make a tax-deductible donation.
The chapter is blessed with a dedicated core of active members who see the value of this community. Our mission is to inspire the next generation of journalists, promote diversity and support media entrepreneurship. We focused our resources in 2010 on outreach, training and mentoring – and you responded.
Our membership increased from about 80 members in 2009 to more than 100 members in 2010. More students are joining our chapter, as are non-traditional journalists, such as Alex Stonehill, co-founder of the Common Language Project and our keynote speaker at our Lunar New Year Banquet & Silent Auction.
Last year’s Lunar New Year fund-raiser at Tea Palace set a new attendance record, with more than 70 attendees. The chapter board was so pleased with the turnout, we’ve decided to hold our 2011 event there on Jan. 29. Save the date!
One of our key strategies in 2010 was partnering with other organizations to broaden our reach and expand local benefits to members.
The boards of SPJ Western Washington and AAJA Seattle agreed to offer each group’s members reciprocal rates on events to increase attendance and diversity. That gave our AAJA Seattle members access to SPJ’s fall training series and freelancer’s workshop at SPJ member rates.
AAJA Seattle also signed a partnership agreement with 911 Media, a non-profit provider of multimedia training, which provided our members with discounted rates and fellowships for students and professionals. Our first recipient of the fellowship was Carina del Rosario, a freelance photographer, who applied the fellowship toward a class in audio recording.
And our chapter collaborated with other local journalism organizations to broaden our reach and relevance: We provided financial or in-kind support to three regional conferences – Journalism That Matters, SPJ Regional Conference, and the Northwest Video Workshop.
We also provided financial and in-kind support to the newly launched Sea Beez ethnic media consortium, and the William O. Douglas SPJ chapter in co-hosting a “Choppy Waters†workshop for students at Central Washington University.
Finally, we collaborated with the Seattle chapter of the National Association of Asian-American Professionals (NAAAP) on two of their events and promoted the kickoff event of the local chapter of Hacks/Hackers, a journalism innovation group.
Speaking of innovation, our AAJA Seattle chapter held our inaugural Innovation Salon at the Seattle Art Museum in May. The classy event at SAM’s TASTE restaurant offered attendees appetizers, wine and tips on Twitter. We plan to hold another Innovation Salon in 2011. Stay tuned.
Acting on another strategic priority, the chapter this year stepped up its efforts to support the next generation of journalists: We held two student pizza nights (including a multimedia journalism night at the UW), judged student work at the Washington Journalism Education Association state conference and awarded four Northwest Journalists of Color scholarships and two Founders scholarships.
Three of our scholarship winners attended the AAJA National Convention and blogged about their experiences. Read what Peter Sessum, Mary Pauline Diaz and Katelin Chow wrote.
And after returning from a fantastic AAJA National Convention in Los Angeles,  we held an end-of-summer potluck in West Seattle’s Lincoln Park.
We also elected new officers for 2011. Here are your officers for next year:
President: Sanjay Bhatt, reporter, The Seattle Times
VP, Events: Caroline Li, editor, EarthWalkers.com
VP, Programs: Owen Lei, reporter, KING 5
Treasurer: Mai Hoang, reporter, The Yakima Herald-Republic
Secretary: Venice Buhain, editor, Bellevue Patch
As you know, our National Board Representative Athima Chansanchai was elected to AAJA National Secretary to fill the remaining term of Doris Truong, who was elected AAJA National President. The chapter board is discussing its next step to fill Tima’s seat for the remainder of her term.
Speaking of national AAJA affairs, it’s been a challenging year. Fiscal crises threatened AAJA’s future, and all chapters, including ours, gave funds to stabilize the organization.
We can all be proud of our AAJA National President Sharon Chan and AAJA National Treasurer Candace Heckman for steering the national organization through the crisis and making tough decisions. Today AAJAÂ has a strong executive director and is on steadier fiscal ground.
And in what could become an annual tradition, Sharon, Candace and Seattle Times Executive Editor David Boardman, who is also an AAJA Seattle member, organized an all-media Holiday Scoop party at Nectar that benefitted the Northwest Journalists of Color scholarship endowment.
I’d like to thank everyone who helped support the chapter in accomplishing its goals this year. Our event chairs deserve huge kudos: Caroline Li (Lunar New Year Banquet), Nicole Tsong and Mai Hoang (student workshops), Mai Hoang and Venice Buhain (scholarship application and judging), Karen Johnson (innovation salon), and Naomi Ishisaka (scholarships reception).
Our AAJA Seattle community is strong. We can meet any challenge by working together. Our continued success rests on your support, so please renew your membership, bring a colleague to our events and tell us how you’d like to get involved!
If you’re not already, I encourage you to follow us @aajaseattle on Twitter, join our Facebook group and check us out at aajaseattle.org.
I wish you and yours a memorable holiday season and prosperity in the New Year!
In unity,
Sanjay Bhatt
President, AAJA Seattle chapter
Reporter, The Seattle Times
Our chapter is lucky to have a great team as we enter 2011. In our recent chapter officer elections, you elected a new treasurer and vice president for programs, and re-elected a vice president for events.
Caroline Li
Vice president for events
Caroline is founder of social media travel web site Earthwalkersmag.com and its print edition, Earthwalkers Magazine. She freelances stories and has worked for TD Wang Advertising Group, a full-service marketing agency that helps companies reach the Asian-American market. You can find her on Twitter @earthwalkers.
Owen Lei
Vice president for programs
Owen is a reporter for KING 5 News, which he joined in January 2009, and has more than a decade of experience in broadcast news. Prior to KING 5, Owen reported for KETV in Omaha, Neb., where he provided continuous coverage of several breaking news and weather stories, including the 2007 mass shootings in an Omaha mall and a deadly tornado that destroyed a Boy Scout camp. Owen also reported for KESQ in Palm Springs, Calif., where he covered multiple wildfires in 2005; and KTVM in Butte and Bozeman, Mont., where he wrote about anything from Iditarod sled dogs to national guard deployments to the tallest horse in the world. He participated in the 2010 AAJA Executive Leadership Program with support from the Seattle chapter. You can find him on Twitter @king5olei.
Mai Hoang Parmentier
Treasurer
Mai has worked as a business reporter at The Yakima Herald-Republic since 2006. She co-chaired this year’s Northwest Journalists of Color scholarship and organized an SPJ-AAJA workshop for students at Central Washington University. She is also president of the SPJ William O. Douglas Pro chapter, which serves journalists in Central Washington and northeastern Oregon. You can find her on Twitter @maiphoang.
I’d also like to thank Nicole Tsong, my colleague at The Seattle Times, for her hard work and contributions these past two years as treasurer for the Seattle chapter. She’s been a key part of our success in fundraising, managing our budget and organizing great programs. Thank you, Nicole!
AAJA Seattle members Sharon Chan and Karen Johnson are joining forces to hold a kickoff event for Hacks/Hackers Seattle on Nov. 11 at Havana in Capitol Hill.
Come out and show your support and learn about this interesting group!
There will be FREE food from Marination Mobile sponsored by Patch.com!
Hacks/Hackers is a group that was started by former AP bureau chief Burt Herman (now CEO of Storify), Aron Pilhofer of The New York Times, and Richard Gordon of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
Read a piece Herman wrote about Hacks/Hackers’ origins. Gordon has written on PBS’ MediaShift blog about the first truly national gathering of Hacks/Hackers last spring in San Francisco.
Hacks/Hackers meetups have become common now at national journalism conventions, including at this year’s Investigative Reporters and Editors convention in Las Vegas. (We gathered at the hotel bar, of course.) The group has received sponsorship from the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge and has attracted journalists and technologists from all over the country. Former New York Times reporter and AAJA member Jenny 8. Lee is a key organizer for Hacks/Hackers now.
Hacks/Hackers chapters are forming one by one across the nation, and our own Sharon and Karen have taken the initiative to get the Seattle one off the ground.
Chan, who covers Microsoft for The Seattle Times (and finishing her term this year as AAJA National President), sent out this invitation:
If you’re a journalist who cares about technology and the future of media, you should come. If you’re a technologist who cares about journalism and the future of media, you should come. Journalists call themselves “hacks,” someone who can churn out words in any situation. Hackers use the digital equivalent of duct tape to whip out code. Hacker-journalists try and bridge the two worlds.
Hacks/Hackers Seattle will bring all these people together — those who are working to help people make sense of their world. It’s for hackers exploring technologies to filter and visualize information, and for journalists who use technology to find and tell stories. In the age of information overload, all their work has become even more crucial.
We aim to help members find inspiration and think in new directions, bringing together potential collaborators for projects and new ventures.
RSVP and get your free ticket at http://seattlehackshackers.eventbrite.com.
For more information about Hacks and Hackers check out http://hackshackers.com.
The event is in partnership with AAJA Seattle and the Western Washington Pro chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
[Mary Pauline Diaz, far left, with fellow Northwest Journalists of Color Scholarship winners Katelin Chow and Peter Sessum and AAJA co-founder Bill Sing during the 2010 AAJA National Convention in Los Angeles.]
Mary Pauline Diaz, a 2010 Northwest Journalists of Color Scholarship winner, spent her summer writing for the Seattle Weekly. As a recipient of AAJA Seattle’s Founders Scholarship, Diaz she also was able to attend the 2010 AAJA National Convention in Los Angeles in August. As AAJA Seattle’s student members return to school, Diaz, a junior at Seattle University, shares why she returns with a renewed confidence in her career path.
It’s easy to feel daunted and overwhelmed by the changing state of the journalism, especially at this point in time. But at the AAJA National Convention, the language and the feeling definitely exuded a renewed hope. As a nervous convention first-timer and forward-minded student, it was refreshing to be around so many journalists who were excited about the future of journalism, who had enough passion to propel themselves past hurdles or who were gearing up for the hurdles they were facing: unemployment for seasoned vets, first forays into a fickle field for students and recent grads and the utter volatility of the industry for everyone.
And that’s not the only good news. The good news (and I think this is good news) is that journalism as we know it is being turned on its head. I jotted down a few quotes from some convention workshops that totally threw me for a loop, but they indicate exactly how journalism itself is being redefined and regenerated.
Get excited. The time in front of us is the perfect time to experiment, reexamine our roles and position yourself for the upper hand in the market.
“New media, digital media, perhaps even journalism don’t really apply as terms for what I do.” – John Bracken, Director of New Media at The Knight Foundation
Let go of those traditional conceptions of your job description. Regardless of what Bracken himself does, every journalist has to face the transitioning ambiguity of what journalism is, what media is and what audiences consider their sources of information.
“Audio is really a visual medium.” – Sora Newman, Senior Trainer at NPR
Though every format and every story is unique, the richest part of a converging media market is indeed the convergence. It’s not just about the parts sitting beside each other but the way they meld and speak to each other. Newman and the others on the Audio Storytelling for Print Journalists panel challenged participants to look beyond the verbal portion of audio stories and to capture the ambient sounds and bits that paint that “picture” for the listener.
“Content is king, but collaboration is queen. If you think of a chessboard, the king is the most important, but, let’s be honest, the queen is most powerful.” – David Cohn, Spot.us
The most hopeful thing to hear over and over again at the convention was the call to collaborate, a particular theme of the hyperlocal news panel featuring Cohn. Especially as citizen journalism grows and culture’s demand for transparency and immediacy grows, the spirit of collaboration not only grows in importance but in creativity. Spot.us, for instance, uses a unique model of collaborative funding — freelancers can pitch stories, and community members can pitch in the cash.
“It’s not about what the staff is doing. It’s about what the reader is experiencing.” – Wasim Ahmad, Multimedia Journalist and Assistant Professor at Stonybrook University
So often we get caught up in what all of this change means for our jobs and our futures, but journalists should really be mindful of what the changing media landscape means for the audience — not only in how it will change the way people receive information but also the way people interact with information and what they choose to do with it.
“The business of journalism is the business of relationships.” – Raja Abdulrahim, Staff Writer at Los Angeles Times
“You’re not just a journalist. You’re a human being.” – Eiji Yamashita
I put these two together because they pull at a similar issue. So often do we, in the pressure to remain objective, lose sight of the communities and people who are affected the most. It’s not impossible to be both empathetic and fair, and perhaps empathy is intrinsic to justice. Our work as journalists are strengthened by nurturing relationships and trust with the people around us.
“This is not news in one point in time. I want to tell a story with an arc.” – Christopher Wong, Filmmaker of Whatever It Takes
Especially with tools like Twitter, there’s a lot of hype around up-to-the-minute bites (or bytes) of news, quick snippets of information. And the reality is, there’s definitely a demand for that in this fast-paced world. Yet as we reimagine different ways to make the news, we gain more opportunities to harness the power of a compelling story, something that isn’t just informative in an intellectual and utilitarian sense but something that speaks to the bigger picture.
