[Imc-radio] Radio Group Minutes 6/16/03

[Zachary C. Miller]

Radio News Meeting
6/16/03
Notes: Zach
Facilitating: Clint
Attending: Ondine, Zach, Sam, Janet, Beth, Clint

Radio news meetings shall always be Third Monday of the Month, other
radio work will be done via email and the radio news voice mail box at
344-8820 - 6:30pm

Framing question of the meeting: how can we get more people to do news.

This was a brainstorming meeting so the minutes are pretty unstructured.

Here's the important bits: 
Ondine and Zach were declared Radio News spokes. 
Clint will get some outreach fliers made for newsroomt at ucimc.org.
Clint will document horizontal and vertical roles and areas for production.
Zach will airshift on Monday.
Sam will produce Monday's show.
Monday's show needs more content. 
Clint will be out of town for a week on vacation.
Janet will contact Dave Monk, Paul Strode, and Laura Huth re environmental issues

Here's the raw data:

Clint: 
Brainstorm possible changes in format.

Brainstorm roles. (producers, recorders, headlines, production
assistants, etc)
 Schedule headlines coordinator role on a rotating basis.
 Gia is really interested in production.

We've lost spontaneity by losing our regularly scheduled weekly
meeting. Maybe there'd be interest in getting a quick email each week
about roles and such.

Another possible role: techie dude, encode stuff into Mp3 format and
upload and inform Macomb. Janet may be able to do this.

Content: series of shows, cover city council meetings every monday,
Headlines: currently our headlines are national and our features are
local. More people would like to hear local headlines.
headlines at ucimc.org, no one uses it anymore.

Schedule upcoming shows. Weekly deadlines? If reporters drop off their
audio by X then it'll be produced by Y and ready for air by Z

Outreach targets. Taste of Champaign is coming up this weekend.

Clint is no longer shifting the show and Randall will be doing it but
there's a one week gap. We need a volunteer for next week.

Ondine - 

What is a headline? When you talk with friends you say "did you hear
X?" We can repeat stuff that was reported in other media sources and
point to the source We need a city council junkie, and a school board
junkie, and etc.  What should people know about from city council
vs. the boring stuff?

Clint - 

I need ideas for the show. I can work on the show if I get fed ideas.

Janet -

I've never though of local headlines. Thought of headlines in national
terms only. This idea is great.

Ondine - 

How do we engage people to build community. 

Clint - The role of being a specialized niche headlines reporter is an
easy one to fill.

Janet - We should put out an email to IMC and WEFT lists asking people
to fill these headlines roles.  Ondine - "Check it out" Clint and
Janet - we can get Dave Monk to do occasional stuff, think about other
WEFTie cross polination

Turning headlines into features is easier than trying to invent features. 
Clint - would love to have 100 people who produce 1 feature each year,
none of them have to actually do full production, just be experts.
Ondine - outreach to youth. 
Janet - Dave has a whole tribe of kids.
Ondine - approach douglas library, maybe someone could go over there
with portable stuff and put microphones in people's faces.
Clint - I can't do it, but if a volunteer can do it it'd be awesome. 
Ondine - Technologically impaired. Clint - but that's ok. 
Janet - How about doing stuff with SDAS?
Ondine - Headlines can be really boring, sometimes you need to tell
people why they should be following certain stories. There's like
seven things happening in the schools right now that may seem boring
but from a larger perspective it's huge and interesting. So you have
to frame it right to make it interesting. Personalize it?
Janet - What does it mean to me? 
Clint - connect news to action
Ondine - talk to John Lee JOhnson, ask "what should we really care
about right now"
Ondine - can connect to various activists
Zach - we need a stream of information rather than a trickle so that
we can be selective, the more we can throw out the more interesting
stuff will be left over.
Clint - local schools, urban planning, business decisions, why haven't
we done anything on the methadone clinic? (is the environment around
broadway different?, historical summary)
Clint - we've been covering activist stuff, let's move out to the
broader community so it's community members talking about community
rather than activists making news about activism
Clint - let's keep kicking the ant hill
Clint - we need to open doors. 
Janet - maybe sometimes it is better to say you're from WEFT

Clint - send out an email about areas to be covered and possible
people to nominate for those areas. Publicize newsroom at ucimc.org list.

Zach - we should do REALLY targetted publicity to get lots of little
volunteers rather than the kind of big volunteers we've sought before

Janet - What if we tried to get an article in the WEFT Revue,
specifically with this idea in mind.

Ondine - we have to find people who like to be opinionated. 

Janet - maybe there are people we can reach who wouldn't bite "you can
produce the news" but who may still have something worthwhile to say,
they just don't want to work that hard.

Clint - How about little 60 second community corner things. Or a "The
Stump" section. Ondine - Get young people "what do you care about"?

Zach - more people on the streets. 

Clint - we need more feeders but we also need some solid producer
people, 2 or 3 people.

Ondine - feel pressure about getting actualities, maybe we don't
always need to do that.

Clint - maybe if people leave voice mail we can air that directly. 

Clint - we can inject more fun and comedy and arts.  Ondine's series -
called "Good to Know", interviews with diverse members of the
champaign community who work to build community. Inspire people.

Rotating production schedule?

Sam - a big problem is intimidation factor of getting people in here
to do stuff, I'll take anyone's audio and produce it into something.

Clint - I will make a task list of what all the jobs are. 
Publicize the newsroom list, Darrin may be able to help do this. 
list of Verticle segments of the news landscape.
list of Roles (horizontal segments)
create radio.ucimc.org
Sam is working with National to get streaming. 

Zach and Ondine are declared spokes. 
Zach will shift on Monday. at WEFT 4pm-6pm.
Sam will do the final production for Monday.
We have nothing but Guia's piece for next week.

Janet will get in touch with Paul Strode and Laura Huth.

There may be a story to be done about recycling and where it actually goes.

-- 
Zachary C. Miller - @= - http://wolfgang.groogroo.com/
IMSA 1995 - UIUC 2000 - Just Another Leftist Muppet - Ya Basta!
 Social Justice, Community, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Feminism,
 Sustainability, Responsibility, Diversity, Democracy, Ecology