SND/Update

Here are my Vice President remarks from the 2009 annual business luncheon Sept. 26 in Buenos Aires.

Good afternoon and welcome to the 2009 annual business meeting of the Society for News Design. I hope you’ve been enjoying the workshop as much as I have, a workshop that has exceeded all expectations. How about a round of applause for our hosts, Gustavo Lo Valvo and the tremendous supporters at Clarin!

During this meeting we want to tell you about some important matters coming up for SND, to update you on SND’s financial health and to announce the results of this year’s election. But first, there are a few special people in the crowd I’d like to acknowledge.

First, please welcome Brian Schlansky, a senior studying visual journalism at the University of Miami School of Communication. Bryan is this year’s recipient of the SND Foundation Scholarship. Brian works for the university’s Knight Center for International Media and serves as Webmaster for Miami’s student newspaper, The Miami Hurricane. Brian, stand up and wave hello!

Now, please join me in welcoming this year’s 18 travel grant winners, also supported by SND’s Foundation. Please stand and wave hello: Cristián Bego María Briones Alejandro Bruna Andreina Fernandes Lionel Fernández Roca Lauren Frohne Aderlani Furlanetto Valentina Gangotena Federico Gómez Adam Griffiths Maria Jesus Lopez Gabriela Lorenz Militza Moya Katherine Myrick Aaron Olson María Luján Pereiro Sahar Vahidi and Andrea Zagata

This week the Foundation — under the leadership of its president, Susan Mango-Curtis and its education director, Jennifer George Palilonis — launched an exciting new resource for educators to share ideas, course descriptions, syllabi and research. And coming soon to sndeducators.org: An intense mentoring program to connect promising students with seasoned professionals.

These are your donations to the Foundation hard at work. You are the key to helping us develop the next generation of visual journalists, so please, give generously.

And now, a few words about where SND is headed.

It’s been a tough summer for the organization, and I want to commend the board of directors to you for their devotion and selfless service to SND. Two leaders in particular have displayed tremendous dedication and provided constant counsel to me after the resignation of President Matt Mansfield in June: my fellow officers Past President Gayle Grin and Secretary/Treasurer Steve Dorsey.

Gayle and Steve both bring an impressive degree of courage, intelligence, sensitivity and vision to any conversation. They are the level heads, the volunteers for the most thankless tasks, and often the very glue that holds SND together. Executive Director Elise Burroughs has also been magnificent in overseeing the society’s day-to-day operations during such a turbulent time. Please join me in thanking them for outstanding leadership.

We’ve been working our way through a few important processes together, most notably the decision about who our next executive director will be upon Elise’s departure at the end of the year, and where they will be headquartered. Let me tell you where we are with that.

A search committee of 12 SND leaders in 5 countries, including two past presidents, has reviewed the 75 applications we received. They have narrowed the pool to three finalists who will interview with the committee in two weeks. In the meantime, we’ve been exploring alternative headquarter locations after the initial plan to relocate to the University of North Carolina fell apart. The most likely scenario now is that instead of working out of an office park in Rhode Island, our new executive director will be working out of a virtual office in a location of their choosing.

The board also made some other decisions when we met on Wednesday that I want to tell you about.

First, we have decided to expand the Best of News Design competition to include magazines as well as newspapers, starting now.

Secondly, we are redrawing the regional boundaries of the United States to better reflect the geographic breakdown of our membership, reducing the number of U.S. regional directors from eight to four. Here’s how the old and new regions compare:

Finally, we want to clarify our election process for selecting SND officers and to codify this process by way of bylaws amendment. You’ll be hearing more about that in coming weeks since a vote of approval from the members is required to make this change. We anticipate calling a special meeting of the members for this purpose in connection with the spring board meeting in Denver. The board also decided that the position of Past President will remain vacant for 2010, given that we are closing 2009 with a vacancy in the presidency. The 2011 ballot — which is the responsibility of the Past President — will be crafted by the executive committee as a body.

The most pressing matters before the board remain solving the issues of declining revenue and membership. I’m going to turn the time over to our secretary/treasurer in a minute to tell you more about that.

But first, I want to thank you all for the pleasure and privilege it has been to serve as your vice president, to serve alongside some of the most inspirational people I know.

In its more than 30-year-history, SND has faced many tough transitions. We’ve celebrated the triumphs and weathered the struggles of the industry, and we will continue in that tradition as we continue to help members invent their own futures. SND is still the largest and most dynamic organization representing visual journalists in the world. There is so much more to do. I am pulling with you, and look forward to helping you move that effort along in any way I can.

Thank you.