February 12, 2015 CAB Minutes

Community Advisory Board Meeting Thursday, February 12, 2015 – 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Ron and Linda Yanke Family Research Park 220 E. Parkcenter Boulevard, Room 700 Board Members in Attendance: Emily Walton, Chair Shelby Zepeda, Vice Chair David Lombardi Vicki Lawson Tony Shallat Randi McDermott

Maria Trebby Dave Fotsch Cornelia Sprung Dede Ryan Shikhar Sarin Leta Neustaedter

Staff in Attendance: John Hess, General Manager Tara Cooper, Recorder Kelly Palmer, Development Director

Scot Graf, News Director Paul Stribling, Programming Director Emilie Ritter Saunders, Digital Content Coordinator

Marilyn Shuler Susan Giannettino Azam Houle Mary Reiman Kristin Mattews

***************** Call to Order – Emily Walton Chair, Emily Walton, called the Boise State Public Radio Community Advisory Board (CAB) meeting to order at 6:04 p.m.

Approval of December 2014 Meeting Minutes – Emily Walton Motion: Dave Fotsch made a motion to approve the minutes; seconded by Dede Ryan. The motion was passed unanimously.

Sub Committee Reports Advocacy (Emily Walton): Emily and John have been meeting with elected leaders to ask them to sign a letter to show their support. These individuals have been county/city level officials. The focus right now is on the Treasure Valley; however the group is trying to identify leaders in other areas to speak with.

Tony asked to join Advocacy Committee and help with this.

Programming (Shelby Zepeda): The trivia event was originally planned for February; however, with the holidays there was not enough time to plan to make it a good event. It has now been moved to June.

BSPR staff is all on board and the Programming committee would like to open event planning to the larger group. Adrienne is working on scheduling a planning meeting to look at next steps. The VAC in 1|Page

Garden City has offered their space for free. The staff Marketing committee is very excited. John would like to have teams sign up; this could be a signature event for the CAB. Sustainability (Kelly Palmer): BSPR was invited to submit to The Idaho Women’s Charitable Fund, however, we did not get accepted. Kelly did use some of proposal to apply for a smaller grant for environmental reporting which we did receive. This will be for a 2 to 5 part series on the environment.

We closed out the capital campaign at $177K, which was above our goal. We also ended the year at $211K in Broadcast Society funding.

The collateral materials have been developed for the listening parties that the group discussed previously. When you are ready to host, please email Adrienne Zachary (adriennezachary@boisestate.edu) and let her know what piece you are interested in. She will provide you with all the necessary materials including takeaways with gift remittance forms.

Shikhar noted that he knows an individual interested in hosting a development function; Kelly asked him to talk to her about this further.

Review Station Code of Editorial Integrity – John Hess Due to what is currently going on in the news with the Brian Williams/NBC issue. It is pertinent that we review BSPR’s Code of Journalistic and Professional Conduct that was originally approved in October 2006.

All we have is our integrity/credibility with the public and we need to be very cognizant of that. We have over ten thousand members, over 500 underwriters, and we’ve raised over $1.9 million at the local level. Our integrity is key to these individuals.

The 2006 document needs a lot of updates to catch up with times and address new areas such as the Internet, Facebook, etc. John requested that the CAB move to adopt the Public Media Code of Integrity executive summary interim to reviewing/modifying the larger Local Public Media Organizations Code of Editorial Integrity (both documents were provided to CAB member prior to the meeting). These documents were developed the Affinity Group Coalition and the Station Resource Group with the support of the CPB. If the CAB approves, then John will send this information to the President’s office and the legal department for review and approval and the CAB can review/modify the larger document to meet our needs.

Scott Graf and Emilie Ritter Saunders are present to help answer questions from a journalistic point of view.

Group Discussion: • Staff noted that when donors comes forward to help fund journalistic endeavors, it is made very clear that if we accept money from them, they have no editorial control over content. o Scott and members of the news team determine content.

• Shikhar – Need to make sure there is a statement pertaining to conflict of interest/undue interest from other sources (especially University/state). The line is not always clear cut even in Academic departments. This was a very important point for the whole group.

• We can strengthen/change this policy to make it what we need.

• This won’t be a static document; it will have to be reviewed more regularly.

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• • • •

Also important to have policy for how reporters interact with other reporters.

David felt the proposed document felt defensive, whereas, our original document feels like truth.

Susan suggested that blending the new with the old feels better.

The group was also interested in what staff thinks and what their concerns and thoughts are.

The CAB members would like a small group to work with staff through the development process of modifying or creating a new document that reflects our station and our needs: Ethics Committee: Marilyn Shuler, Leta Neustaedter, Susan Giannettino, Randi McDermott, and David Lombardi, Emily Walton, John Hess John will keep everyone advised on what is happening with this process. Emily will be sending out reading assignments. John would like to continue dialogue with this in future meetings going forward, even after a new code has been adopted.

Station report – John Hess The goal for our December fund drive was $70K, we end that drive at $166K. Everything aligned well together, the timing, goals, premiums, compelling arguments, economy on upswing, gas down, and we did not let off gas and kept pushing. We put in more effort, more e-blasts, and had stronger messaging.

Our Spring drive will be 5 days and will take place in April.

We now have a newly designed website with a cleaner look. It is a dynamic site that looks same on all devices, this is especially important because we had more visits in January on mobile devices than any other way. We had over 1.7 million page views last year on the site; the city that grew fastest for website use as Meridian (for visits). We have lots of information from Google Analytics regarding website traffic. Website underwriting is different from on air, in that it isn’t governed the same way onair spots are. We are trying to keep the same precepts for both.

The Community Conversation held last night (2/11/15) went well. There was good, high-quality conversation; however, we did not have a large crowd. Scott is planning to air the conversation. As time goes on and the word spreads about these events they will grow. The group requested not using limiting language (only 200 seats available) in promos, as that can deter some interested individuals.

Adjourn – Emily Walton The next meeting will take place on April 16, 2015 from 6:00 – 7:30 p.m. at 220 E. Parkcenter Boulevard, room 700.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:32 p.m.

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