Dear SND members,
You have heard a lot of information tossed out during the last few days on how your elected officers and appointed board have handled two significant issues that collided: a search for a new executive director and a possible move of the Society’s offices to a university campus.
You have also heard that some members of the board believe I was not as forthcoming as I should have been. I have already apologized to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for not letting them know of a change in direction. In my zeal to try to accomplish a lot, I moved too fast and was caught in the crossfire of several people who have differing versions of essentially the same story. I regret those decisions and am on record as saying it was an error in judgment.
In an effort to put this all to rest and end the acrimony on the board, I agreed to the timeline. As with so many things like this, there are many more details and mitigating factors, a litany of people with opinions on the correct course of action and some who put pressure on me in ways too odd to imagine. They aren’t worth discussing much anymore.
I know that, as long as I have been a volunteer for SND, I have been working for the good of this organization’s members. I hope you all will continue to be SND members and do what’s right to help the Society move forward.
My advice for SND:
Clarify and communicate what SND does: A lot of people need to know what SND stands for and how they can help. We have seen an outpouring of people out there who want to be engaged. The Society’s leaders have to let members define what the organization will be and that probably includes reaching out to find new people who would see themselves in SND if given the chance to shape that definition — and to extend it beyond the scope of its history.
Stop the turf wars on the board: They are not helping anything. Talk to each other and come to amicable solutions. The energy devoted to a mess like this has exhausted too many of us at a time when we should be working hard to confront the challenges of the industry.
Communicate, communicate, communicate: My other big mistake was not telling everyone everything I knew up front. I feared this would close the door for something good for SND at UNC and that weighed heavily in my decision to step down. I also listened to Bonita Burton, the vice president, when she implored me and Steve Dorsey, the secretary/treasurer, not to be more open in communications after I resigned. Bonita was adamant that our FAQ and live chat focus on the future, which is the right step forward. What we failed to see was that we had to talk enough about the past to give that future context.
Look ahead and be transparent: The Society, obviously, needs to get better at posting minutes, being more open about what’s going on, and generally keeping members clued in more. A flood of information would be a good thing, in my opinion. And that has to extend to a full and frank discussion of SND’s financial health. SND had a loss of about $29,000 last year, and the gap is bigger so far this year. The only way SND stays afloat is by dipping into its reserve accounts and investments.
Look outward for success stories: Find the other organizations out there that are doing smart things. Then steal like crazy. There’s so much to learn by stepping outside of your usual way of thinking. And find some new revenue streams in that process. SND’s three main source of income are member dues, which are in trouble as fewer and fewer people have the money to spend, the annual print competition, which saw far fewer entries this year, and the annual workshop. For sustainable growth, new models are needed.
Hire a new executive director who has experience fund raising; bonus points, if that person has digital skills: Robb Montgomery wrote about this today on his site. I agree with his assessment, so here it is: “Raising money is the main function of any non-profit’s paid boss and staff. Fund raising takes the pressure off of members having to support all initiatives that cost money. This exec doesn’t need to be a digerati to lead in this area. BUT they do need to know and adopt the best practices of other non-profits that have had great success in using social media. This Harvard Business article “Why Non-Profits Are So Good at Social Media” details this issue wonderfully.”
Invite new people into the process: SND’s in bad need of new blood. There’s been a lot of work done this year on that front with the meetups, but there’s much more to do. Being welcoming cannot just be talk. It has to be action. So dispel the elitist perception (because, as Damon Cain says, perception is reality) and be genuine in active participation in SND.
Do more pioneering programming than ever: Members want and need SND’s help, so find ways to do meaningful training. That has to include online training modules and other forms of distance learning. SND lags badly behind here. Poynter does a great job with NewsU. Partner with them. Look for other partners. Seek out what members find valuable and then deliver in ways that make it easy for training.
Keep growing internationally: The growth of news design globally, and the insights gained from sharing all that we all know, are another way of being open and transparent. The Society’s amazing affiliates around the world are helping chart exciting new innovations. North Americans who don’t take note do this at their own peril.
Thanks again for electing me and giving me the opportunity to help set an agenda. When I announced I was stepping down, I cited some things that are worth repeating as hallmarks of how SND has been pressing ahead this year.
Be industry leaders: The Revenue 2.0 project identified strategies for funding journalism as we put design thinking to work by demonstrating new revenue models for news companies while considering audience as never before. The work we began was just carried forward in another major report and has been noted widely in the press. My hope is that the Society will continue this kind of thought leadership because it’s needed now more than ever.
Change with the times: Training and development for members, especially those who must quickly gain digital skills, has also been at the forefront this year. We have offered successful Web design boot camps, multimedia training, and courses on alternative storytelling forms. More are planned for the coming months.
Connect, connect, connect: A series of meetups have helped members (and non members) in New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C. forge new relationships and talk about our expansive craft. The local initiatives have been amazing. More are planned this year, with the next one this summer in San Francisco. This free training, at a time when so many members (as well as their news organizations) cannot afford tuition, has been a hallmark of how we hoped to see outreach working for the Society. Talented professionals have been generously giving their time in these efforts: I cannot thank Nigel Holmes, Joe Hutchinson, Roger Black, Sarah Slobin, Matthew Ericson, Shan Carter, Cyrus Highsmith, Tyson Evans, Jon Wile, Adrian Holovaty, Jim Coudal, Bill Adee, Tracy Schmidt, Daniel Honigman, Chris Courtney and Jonathon Berlin enough for their assistance in lifting these from idea to reality.
See the whole world of news design: This fall, the Society will host its first international workshop of the decade: SND’s annual gathering will be in Buenos Aires and I have every confidence it will be a wonderful event. Tireless organizers Gustavo Lo Valvo and Chris Edwards have spanned the world to plan a program squarely aimed at confronting the biggest issues facing visual journalism, with an eye on how that global exchange of ideas has relevance for innovation. It’s a summit especially essential for our time.
Finally, I have been overwhelmed by how many of you in recent days have asked me to stay on. I am convinced that walking away remains the best course of action. But you have proven to me what I had lost sight of in the recent distractions: SND members are the best sounding board out there. We should have talked this out sooner and moved on faster.
Thank you again for electing me. Please help SND thrive.
Matt Mansfield will be president of the Society for News Design through today.
After that, he’ll still be an associate professor at Northwestern University’s
Medill School of Journalism and co-director of its Washington program.
Fellow members,
First, a disclosure: I’ve known Matt Mansfield for many years. We have been colleagues and friends. We also have a history of being brutally honest with each other.
During the crafting of this post, which has taken several days, I’ve tried to remove my “friend of Matt” hat in favor of my “20 years of SND” hat.
Living in D.C., some of us have had a firsthand view of the powerhouse and advocate that is Matt. Revenue 2.0, Meetups, more online resources. We also witnessed his commitment during the planning of the San Jose annual workshop. The guy has been supremely dedicated to SND, re-energized long-time members (like me) and brought in a lot of new thinking. He has demonstrated an unprecedented urgency in fulfilling his duties.
It is this urgency, triggered by an industry and Society in crisis, that also propels me to initiate this post—my first of this kind to a public forum. I’m not speaking as a representative of my company, but rather as a long-time member who has also devoted a significant amount of time to this organization, as well. I feel compelled to make some observations, but also ask a few unanswered questions.
Clearly, we don’t have all of the details. The ones we do have provide different perspectives. But, piecing together information from various online reports and blog comments, to me, it appears that:
1. Though it was a generous offer to provide space at UNC for SND’s headquarters, it seems as if there were at least some strings attached.
2. There were several big moving parts in play at the same time: Recruiting a new Executive Director and considering a HQ location change. There were likely crossed wires and miscommunication all around as events collided. It is also possible that Matt made assurances that he couldn’t keep, as events converged. Matt clearly consulted with the Executive Committee on the Director decision, even though he had the authority to make the decision alone. There was an effort to keep decisions regarding the personnel issue as private as possible–too private? to me, it’s unclear.
3. When some at UNC didn’t like what they were told (or not told), they threatened to pull the plug. The potential loss of the deal was apparently leveraged against Matt to pressure him into resigning.
4. Some on the Executive Committee tried to brush over the details of the past few weeks’ events to Society members, providing the façade of a united front, working together to lead the Society into the future.
5. That appointed (and elected) members of the board pressured the elected president to resign—before a board vote. It’s also apparent that they capitalized on his sense of obligation to the Society’s future to get him to agree.
6. It is possible that instead of providing transparency, some took advantage of the situation and not only fanned the flames, but created a distraction from the heart of the immediate issues by promising members new committees, an examination of bylaws, etc.
7. We have lost some of our most energetic, progressive board members–and likely other long-time members—due to disillusionment over the handling of a subjective disagreement that should have been resolved within the board.
So,
If 1 is true: A top priority should be the formation of a new committee charged with making recommendations on potential HQ locations. It’ll be critical that representatives from that location do not try to influence decisions about paid or volunteer positions. Like many, I’m left wondering, did the university stop negotiating with Matt and others? If so, that seems reason enough to consider other locations, as well.
If 2 is true: Matt has acknowledged and apologized his mistakes in communication and timing. But, there has been no evidence that any decisions were made for personal gain—or that any possible mistakes could be considered malicious or “impeachable”. Seems that there is more than enough blame to go around, without making Matt the sole scapegoat.
If 3 is true: Has there been an abuse of (perceived) power by anyone on either board? Is it possible that the wrong resignations have been tendered? More likely, nobody should have resigned–or felt pressured to resign—to begin with. It seems like a very tangled web, frankly. While this is your Society, board members, it is also ours. The board meetings are held to propel the wishes of the membership—not to work out your own personal agendas and grudges. I’m hesitant to say it because you volunteer your time. But, some of you have let us down. Clearly, most board members represent us admirably and give generously of themselves. We’re grateful for that. It is a real shame that you’ve had to waste so much time on the petty side of this at a time when the Society itself is in jeopardy.
If 4 is true: A few solutions: 1. There could be a truly open election in the Fall, allowing members to make their own judgments. 2. There could be a careful examination–by an impartial committee–as to whether any remaining board members neglected their responsibilities to serve the membership by unduly pressuring Matt to resign, being aggressively opportunistic or misleading board or Society members. Ideally, this would clear up any lingering doubts about motivation.
If 5 is true: Does it really come down to a choice between UNC or Matt Mansfield? Is this really the only solution? It seems Matt should be encouraged to reconsider his resignation and continue to lead an aggressive plan for moving the Society forward. But, that’s clearly his decision. The newspaper industry is fighting for its very existence–and so is this organization. A big shakeup right now is stalling that fight.
If 6 is true: When this disagreement escalated (to the point of calling for a resignation), the obligation was triggered to make real details available, as requested by the members. The live chat was vague and insulting. Now it’s time for some introspection. Did any of you take advantage of this situation to further your own personal agendas? I hope not. But, if you did, please work hard to rectify this situation immediately.
If 7 is true: Folks, there are NOW much bigger issues to resolve than where the headquarters will be. The credibility of the remaining leaders–and future of SND itself–are in jeopardy.
I have to ask, Matt (& others), are you reconsidering your resignations?
Here’s hoping that there will be an accelerated open examination of events, followed by quick, deliberate, appropriate triage and then a move forward to aggressively addressing the much bigger chronic industry ills.
In any case, members, please be active in the Fall election. Mount write-in campaigns, ask tough questions, vote.
Like many members, I’ll be watching closely to see how this mess is cleaned up. The outcome will inform my decision on my future involvement in the organization. I will certainly honor my commitment to speak in Buenos Aires.
Let’s remain hopeful that something really good could come out of all of this: a re-focused, transparent, member-centric, progressive Society engaged in meeting our most-pressing challenges.
Thanks for reading.
Kris Viesselman
Excellent!
In my opinion the ONLY way to put all this behind us, is to cancel your resignment. It can’t be too late, and I’m sure it can be worked out.
It will make all of you look like fools and drama queens for a short while, but that will pass. Such are the nature of engaged journalistic leaders.
Why would you as SND-president have to resign, because some people at a University won’t deal with you? You made a mistake and you’ve apologized.
What does that spell for the future of SND if we let anyone else than the members decide who leads this organization?
By accepting you back as president the rest of the board will prove that they’re really working for SND. I don’t see any other solution, so please give it another thought.
With you and all the others leaving I genuinely fear that SND won’t survive for long. The rift will simply be too big.
With you serving the remainder of your presidency it will be clear that the board has learned. And the rift can be healed.
I think it’s a little more complicated than that ‘Jack.’ If you’ve read anything about the situation that surrounds this you would know that Matt was trying to get two things done at once for SND and the situation was simply mishandled.
Matt did the best he could and in my opinion never acted with malicious intent.
If only everyone were capable of making a mistake.
And I take offense to your pointed commentary implying that Northwestern should somehow now be involved.
After reading your comment, it doesn’t sound like you’ve taken your time to sort through the facts of the situation (which are available on this site). Why don’t you do that before you start calling for someone’s career to end.
I don’t know who you are nor do I care who you are ‘Jack,’ but I hope no one ever calls for your job in such a public manner. Doing such a malicious thing would make me question the character of that person. Wouldn’t it you?
Well, that Kris V sure can write a note. Very well put.
It’s very sad to see how this all has unfolded. We are all successful professionals who want what’s best for SND, and that has gotten very lost in this whole debacle.
The reason I felt it was time to walk away, beyond what has been accurately reported by VizEds and Poynter, is that SND is about the membership and promoting visual journalism—not about conference calls, emails, board meetings, etc. It’s about reaching out to foster the visual community. I, like many other people in this great organization, owe a great deal of my success to SND.
So when Gayle Grin appointed me East Coast Regional Director last year, I vowed to really energize my region and try to shed the “clique” aspect of SND. Thus, the meetups were born and we hosted the first one in DC in mid-December. I wanted to give back to SND everything it had given to me, and then some. The Dorseys, Mansfields and others in this organization always gave me great support and guidance on how to lead.
But all the goodwill and things that have been built is quickly being destroyed because of this incident. I don’t know what the solution is, but I do know that this is the darkest time SND has ever faced. And it’s damn sad that it comes at the same time news orgs are going through the same dark time.
And, I have gone on the record before and will say it again: Getting rid of Matt Mansfield does more harm than it does good. I don’t say that because he is one of my best friends. I say it because he epitomizes what SND should be—new media leader who constantly is learning and getting better.
Thanks for listening.
I’ve been trying to avoid the he said-she said nature of this conflict since April. I hope the timeline and president’s column can shed some light on the difficult and time-consuming decisions the Executive Committee and Board face, but I mostly hope we can all move on to regain our focus on what’s more important than any of this drama: the membership.
As a Board member and (new) Executive Committee member, I take responsibility for the votes I cast in making tough decisions. Matt never asked me to keep the Executive Director decisions from UNC or to be dishonest about the situation. The EC discussed on several occasions that contract negotiations and personnel discussions (just like those at our own papers) were confidential for legal reasons. We separated the staffing issue from UNC deal — the proposal did not include any language about the leadership, director or Board operations. In fact, quite the opposite: UNC affirmed SND’s ability to have sole responsibility for staffing and employment issues, and it assured SND would retain its independent status. UNC expressed off-the-record concern about continuity, and we had other office staff who would be there to help make a smooth transition (along with members of the Executive Committee). We voted to search for a new executive director and agreed SND needed someone with more digital skills and a proven track record of growing membership, securing grants, raising funds and establishing authority in the journalism community. We also voted to move ahead with a possible headquarters move to UNC.
And this is when things began to fall apart. Accusations, rumors and calls to resign were flying even before the Board could come together to get all the facts.
In my e-mail that day when several of us mentioned resigning, I was pushing not for Matt to be persuaded to return to office but for us to seek out a solution that could salvage the Board (every member, including Matt). I wanted us to move forward to regain our focus on the membership and deal with bigger, more important issues. I wanted us all to get along, put hurt feelings and egos aside. I wanted us to realize these decisions should not be about one person … there are more important issues for the Board than just Elise Burroughs or Matt Mansfield or any one individual. Here it is, weeks later, and we’re still fighting to regain our focus. People still want to talk about who said what when and to whom. This is all so exhausting. There was never an attempt to come together as a professional Board to find a solution or compromise. Every conversation was about what horrible things would happen if Matt resigned or what horrible things would happen if Matt stayed. It was never about “Well, what if we all stayed and moved on together?” For me, it wasn’t about a divided Board or “competing factions” or “choosing sides” … we all have to remove personal alliances and do what we believe is right.
I decided to stay on the Board and the Executive Committee, but not because I support how this miscommunication has spun into a wildly out-of-proportion debacle. I want to stay because I believe in SND. I owe so much of my professional life to SND, and I want to help it move forward so it can provide desperately needed help and guidance to visual journalists who are facing a troubled industry. The Board has some important issues to deal with: an Executive Director search, task forces to evaluate Board structure, bylaws, the strategic plan we’ve all be working on for a year or more and hopefully one to consider future headquarters possibilities. There needs to be healthy debate every step of the way. I think some key questions have come to light through all of this. SND should take any headquarters move very seriously and look at all long-term effects, financially and logistically. We need to keep offering hands-on training, Revenue 2.0 brainstorming, meet-ups, help for laid off journalists, a network of free support, guidance and advice. All of the issues people have brought up in these forums and comments are the same issues we struggle with at every Board meeting. We must find ways to increase and engage our membership. I hope everyone can step up to volunteer even in the smallest of ways. I want to be right there, still dedicating my time, money, energy and ideas. Matt set forward a very ambitious agenda, and I want to be on the Board to help make sure we can accomplish as much as possible.
I think the quickest and easiest complaint to make about SND is that it’s a “clique.” But I can honestly say that, since I first met SND members and began getting involved in 2002, I have never met a group of such open, fun, dedicated and hard-working volunteers. I doubt I ever will. Matt, Bill, Jon and Tyson are at the top of that list … I can’t even put into words all that I’ve learned while working with them at workshops, quick courses, board meetings, meet-ups, competitions and all the things we do each and every year. I hope everyone who has resigned or is considering resigning will come back in the future so we can all work together again.
I’ve said this several times recently, but please do not hesitate to contact me with ideas or questions. I’ve been trying to think of new ways to engage visual journalists in the Southeast, and I would love to hear from each and every person in this region and others.
Melissa Angle
Region 3 Director
The draft minutes of the April 19, 2009, board of directors meeting are posted in the members-only area of http://www.snd.org. As is customary, they will be approved at the next board meeting, Sept. 23, 2009, in Buenos Aires.
Also, following Buenos Aires, the next Annual Workshops will be Sept. 23-25, 2010, in Denver and Sept. 29-Oct. 1, 2011, in St. Louis.
Kris has written an excellent analysis. But perhaps what the leadership needs is the viewpoint of someone like me, a peripheral, uninvolved member who has only been to a couple conferences in the past and is not a member of any “cliques.”
The first shock was that all this was playing out without our knowledge. This was followed by the sinking feeling of reading about all the infighting, followed by the disillusionment that the real information had to be found from other sources — the live chat session played out like a bad press conference with officials who don’t want to talk.
Now, the timeline released today, while certainly a heartfelt attempt at coming clean, is so convoluted that I lost patience trying to make sense of it. About halfway through, I decided that I didn’t really care who was at fault, a botched deal is a botched deal. Demanding Matt’s resignation for that is compounding the situation, not fixing it.
I’m guessing that the committee in charge at UNC is not so concerned with who will be the next director, they’re a lot more concerned with the stability and viability of SND. As Matt mentions (and the first I’ve heard), SND is losing money and having to dip into its reserves. Charles Apple posted a chart showing a 40 percent drop in membership in the last five years. If I were on that committee, I’d be hesitant to make any deals with such a shaky organization. What I’d want to see is a united board with clear plans for the future.
At my school, we’re looking at all of this and thinking, frankly, that we better find other organizations to partner with. Can you imagine anyone else having a different reaction?
The preservation of SND will have to involve a radical restructuring, I believe, to be able to regain the confidence of its members and partners. A 34-member board, half of whom are appointed, is not going to be able to do it. (Or whatever the exact structure is, I couldn’t easily find that information, or the meeting minutes for that matter, on the website.)
Find out what the members want and ask UNC what it needs to see. Figure out what leadership structure will work — perhaps look at other, more successful organizations. Then, everybody resign and hold elections for positions in the new structure. Maybe it needs to be as radical as that. If you don’t do something though, then the remaining 1,500 membership will be cut in half again by next spring.
Folks,
I had a suggestion that I repost my comments to an older thread here, to the extent they are relevant and merit more discussion. So here goes:
——-
Friends,
I begin to think why Matt resigned, and why Elise is leaving, and why it takes so long to answer all the whys, all quickly become irrelevant questions. No time to waste here.
The only relevant question is: WHAT MUST SND BECOME not only to survive, but to remain relevant—and help journalism thrive in whatever form it takes in coming years.
Some thoughts, more from outside than in these days:
1. SND must represent the brightest thinking focused on innovation in communicating the news. Typeface du jour? Web width of the month? Hell, no. Attracting *and engaging* news consumers and enabling communities around the news? Oh, yeah! Can SND honestly say it holds any industry leadership position there? Ask your publishers. Ask your interactive leaders. Hell, ask your editors. I don’t think the answer will be what you want to hear from any of them.
2. SND needs about half the legislative overhead—and about twice the revenue streams to reinvest in Item 1 above. That means: smaller board, more functional/less celebratory annual workshops (I’m living proof they’re possible), less charity on pricing at the high end (veteran professionals) so it can offer more charity at the low end (students and newbies).
3. SND needs to recognize that “being international” does not require the financial and emotional drain of spreading workshops around the world. Global chapters can and do hold their own events, and they’re much more cost effective than all the trade-offs the society endures to move the big event away from its largest membership base in North America. We have entered an age of instantaneous global communications at incredible fidelity. Important strategic messages, best practices and just plain great work can be shared easily without face-to-face. All the offshore workshops do is put a very expensive exclamation point on the sentence that says “international.” The media business can’t afford to waste time or money that way.
4. HQ needs to be either in academic or professional quarters, probably wherever the new exec director resides. Negotiate leases with the nearest J-school or nearest newspaper, either of which nowadays is likely to have office space and shared services at bargain prices.
5. The interactive training and competition are, well, OK. But interactive is headed in a profoundly different direction than Flash graphics. And again, SND has almost no voice among the interactive leadership of most media companies. You get that when you start focusing on holistic user experience: news, information, advertising, community, interactivity, data, and THEN visualizations. Remember that while SND regulars worry about elaborate feature page spreads, the world has turned the basic unit of communication into 140 characters of text (a tweet or social status message). How does SND apply to that?
6. SND HQ needs respectable Web content management, tied to a respectable CRM system for membership management, tied to an enterprise-grade database management system for the competition(s), events, job bank, portfolios, all the stuff that sat in lil’ ol’ FileMaker all those years. I know it too well—a lot of it still looks like guts of the stuff I built on the fly in, oh, 1997. And that scares me, too.
7. Which leads me to: SND needs to pay better than a living wage to its exec and staff, because managing all that stuff and cat-herding the board, officers and members (admit it, this is the most vocal and emotional group you’d ever expect to have to manage, right?)—well, that commands a salary and bonus plan that will attract top talent.
All right, I’m done. I still pay for my membership. And I’ll keep paying, I think, because I genuinely like the people behind SND and want to see it thrive again. But please hurry. And waste no more time than necessary airing the laundry.
Thanks for hearing me out.
—j.
I’ll add one more thing, having now read the timeline and all further replies:
All else being equal, SND would be better off aligning headquarters with a professional newspaper company than a journalism school.
Reinventing this industry, reinventing journalism, reinventing information design within both—these are not academic exercises. Success requires staying close to street level.
Grow Internationally!!!!
I was lucky enough to attend SNDBoston 07, with some inspirational speakers and world class designers. From New Zealand I was however, only 1 of two people from the South Pacific, the other being a Journalist from Australia. We both got so much out of the conference it’s almost beyond words.
From actually being able to rub shoulders with the ‘gods’ of your field (I’m not a newspaper designer) through to the workshops, it was possibly by far the best conference I have ever attended.
If anyone is familiar with New Zealand newspaper design, you will appreciate my frustration at there not being an active organised branch here. I’ve heard rumors that someone once was involved. In NZ we are lucky in that Newspapers aren’t hurting as much financially as the US market. But that doesn’t preclude good design from being a consideration, and that they should be considering the next step (we are all still in Broadsheet mode).
I would dearly love for there to be an NZ conference (everyone is always telling me they need an excuse to come down here), but do you think that SND has a profile here at all - no!.
I wish all in the SND all the very best. You have all been so hospitable and friendly (even taking me to a ball game), and the plethora of resources provided online is immense.
I hope and am sure you will all get past this stage and a stronger SND will emerge. It’s too valuable a forum to flounder.
All the best guys.