Community Advisory Board Meeting Thursday, April 16, 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 Shikhar Sarin Randi McDermott (phone)
Maria Trebby Susan Giannettino Cornelia Sprung Camille Oldenburg
Staff in Attendance: John Hess, General Manager Tara Cooper, Recorder
Paul Stribling, Programming Director
Marilyn Shuler Kristin Mattews Vicki Lawson Paula Brown Sinclair
***************** 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 February 2015 Meeting Minutes – Emily Walton Motion: Shikhar Sarin made a motion to approve the minutes; seconded by Marilyn Shuler. The motion was passed unanimously. Sub Committee Reports Advocacy (Emily Walton): Congress has zeroed out CPB funding the last 4 years. Now that the Senate majority is Republican, it will likely be more difficult to put anything through. In the past, we’ve always had two years of forward funding, the House has proposed removing the two year forward funding. This forwarding funding helps give us a political cushion, so we’ll have to keep watching spending bills. We will need to write an op-ed (there are tailorable ones from Protect My Public Media) more toward summer to match up with when Congress makes those decisions. Emily is going to assign Tony Shallat to this.
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The group discussed having each CAB member get 3-5 letters asking for continuing support. The Protect My Public Media website has template letters with info on how to send in. John will send out all this contact information in the weekly wrap-up. Programming (Shelby Zepeda): Last Call Trivia is providing the format and hosting our event. It will take place on June 18 at 7 p.m at the Visual Arts Collective (VAC) in Garden City and will last approximately two hours. We are going to have advanced registration. All we need to do is to create categories for content. On-air promotions will begin in mid-May, and there may be a teaser in April newsletter. We will have teams of 6-8 or individuals, $5/registration no matter the size of the team. We are hoping to reach out to other news orgs and corporate sponsors for teams. There will be door prizes drawings and a grand prize for the winner. We are not planning for this to be a huge money maker. The VAC can hold several hundred people, so we aren’t concerned about having too many. This should be big draw since there is a large trivia community in Boise. There will be a cash bar, food truck, and pretty much everything is being done via trade. Group thoughts:
We could have categories all tied to show on Boise State Public Radio (auto – Car Talk, News – Morning Edition). Audio clips in categories. Use Scott Graf’s voice on answering machine as a prize.
There is a sneak peek of how event goes at Old Chicago (downtown) on April 28 at 8 p.m. and it is free. Sustainability (John Hess): We raised over $300K during the fund drive this last week; our goal was $260K. We are hoping that the longer drive will add more new members; John will let group know these numbers when they are known. Maria – we did a really good job selling the $10/mo level. Susan – we need to get down and gritty on federal funding issue, make Idaho first state to be self-sustaining. We need to make it so federal funding isn’t vital to survival. We recently received a $25K donation to help create programming fund. We will be having another Radio in the Making event to help to show how news is made. These are always a fun night and help build relationships with our members. Nominations (Shelby Zepeda): Those on committee will Receive email early June to start next steps, add Kay to list Review of Public Media Code of Editorial Integrity – Emily Walton Emily, Randi, Marilyn, Emily, David, Leta, and Susan were assigned pages from the new document to look over. The group wanted a facilitator to sit down and go over with the group; we haven’t been able to find assistance with this in the time frame. Staff reviewed executive summary sheet in their meeting and were given the larger document. John explained the general idea of the new code to staff. The staff wanted to make sure the CAB didn’t think 2|Page
that staff was doing anything wrong. This became a priority for review due to an incident with university with news staff that accelerated this. Staff hasn’t done anything unethical/wrong. Discussion highlights: David’s Comments – made proposals to very specific sections (page 4 and 7); Interested in “aggressively” pursuing the truth, distinguishing characteristic of public radio. Pursue news aggressively, present objectively and accurately. Leta’s Comments – Facebook, staff personal/professional page – legitimate question area – Slippery slope – no distinction between professional/personal – when you are public personality, give up some of personal space, employees need to be aware of public integrity issue, be careful about those things, code of integrity that we have to follow, and code for BSU employees Marilyn’s Comments – On-air, social media, and community forums included in our reach, our old document feels a bit defensive, and the larger document had more explanation. See one sheet – paragraph 5 (all platforms). Randi’s Comments – Which document do we want to end up with? Shorter documents lend themselves to being more straightforward, old document has better tone the larger document is defensive. The Public Media Code of Integrity document was updated to show how much more public media sources are used now than our older document, includes everything around station activity (not just news), more comprehensive. What can we keep from 2006 document to add to larger document? Susan’s Comments – A firewall is definitely important (governance & funding); providing caveat (disclosure) to transparency of people providing funding end up in news (note that they are CAB). Building trust, preventing undue influence. BSPR makes it clear to all donors that they have no editorial sway (ok to accept funding from people holding office – just know that they receive no special treatment); internal firewall to separate news from donors; free from legislative pressure (pressure State Board of Ed to pull license/funding) There is precedent in Idaho for this. Next steps: Someone to sit down with large document, take comments, put them in new document, address/track changes, email out to whole board – ask to read – agree with what says (include staff). David Lombardi agreed to do this He would really like to hear from the staff, would be happy to meet with anyone. There is not any problem with national document (it has been vetted with a lot of organizations), we can put our local point on it – inclined to not change large document, but rather put together a very specific BSPR document with items very important to us. The larger document is very general and not super clear; the 2006 BSPR document is pretty specific Draft local document consistent with national document that creates higher standard for things that are important to us here. David would be happy to work with committee of anyone (CAB and/or staff) to work through issues with them. Adopt PMC of I and re-write 2006 version as addendum to big one. Ready by June meeting. John will work with David, Emily, and Vicki on this. John will see who on staff would be available to help with this process. 3|Page
Adjourn – Emily Walton The next meeting will take place on June 11, 2015 from 6:00 – 7:30 p.m. at 220 E. Parkcenter Boulevard, room 700. Vicki Lawson would like to thank the station’s engineers for all their work in Northern Idaho to keep the stations on the air. Motion: Maria Trebby made a motion to adjourn the meeting; seconded by Cornelia Sprung. The motion was passed unanimously. The meeting was adjourned at 7:11 p.m.
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