2025 Meeting Minutes

Board members in attendance: Lorena O’English, Richard Miller, Candace Baltz, Gabrielle Bowman, Kedzie Moe, Samantha Glenn, Faith Simon, Matt Haugen, Jennifer Ladwig, Emma Ledbetter and Tracy Milano. Absent: Zahra Khodaverdi, James Owusu Asare, Kailey Sparks, Crystal Delos Santos, and Ben Shors. Staff members: Denise Boyd. 

The board meeting was held online.
Called to order at 4:15 p.m. by Lorena O’English, board chair
Minutes from Feb. 27 read and approved.

 Presentations by EIC candidates followed by Q&A
1.    Levi Coovert
2.    Lucille Stutesman
Executive Session: The board was in executive session from 4:49 p.m. to 5:03 p.m.
Public Session: The board came back into public session at 5:05 p.m. Levi Coovert was elected the 2025 summer/fall EIC.
Public Comments: No comments given.

Lorena O’English, board chair, asked the student leaders to submit their reports to Denise Boyd due to the length of the board meeting.  Denise will distribute them  to the board prior to our next meeting by adding them to these minutes.

Daily Evergreen Editor-in-Chief Gabrielle Bowman

Submitted report: My report is (touching on what was talked about news in February) I met with the news team over spring break. I was going to do it the week after the meeting I just unfortunately got into a skiing accident the weekend before and was out of commission. During the meeting, we discussed the lack of content issue and other issues in the section. We have created a new means of communication specifically for their section and that is up and running, we discussed the opinion issue and did a workshop after spring break related to that to stop it and we discussed how to overcome issues when it comes to deadlines and bumping stories.

Unfortunately, after I made announcements to get stories in over break for the next week of production, we had only one story in so I rolled out strikes to everyone not turning in stories on time.

When it comes to the website, I am very much working on it. I have been able to get rid of the multimedia section and have been trying to expand the life section on the website it just refuses to let me save it so I have been teaching myself how to edit the website and its infrastructure.

Advertising, Richard Miller
Submitted report: Last summer, we lost our $2,600 yearbook ad contract.  I was working with a Murrow prof and his students to have them sell yearbook ads. I haven’t heard back from that team. From prior experience, these ads are difficult to sell. We tried once before, and our best salesperson was able to sell only one. Currently, working on a deal with Spectrum to purchase space on 18 news racks in late summer. 

Finance, K. Denise Boyd: 
Year-end projection as of Feb. 28 is a positive $47,066.56, but this doesn’t include Chinook Yearbook production costs and ASIS costs, which are yet to be posted.

The meeting adjourned at 5:10 p.m.                                                                                              Minutes taken by K. Denise Boyd

Board members in attendance: Kedzie Moe, Gabrielle Bowman, Samantha Glenn, James Owusu Asare, Matt Haugen, Lorena O’English, Emma Ledbetter, Jennifer Ladwig.  Zahra Khodaverdi, Richard Miller and Faith Simon. Staff: Denise Boyd

The board meeting was held online. 
Called to order at 4:15 p.m. by Lorena O’English.
Minutes from the January 30 meeting approved.

Addition to agenda:
Lorena O’English added new business: Discussion of outdated material on Daily Evergreen website

Reports
Daily Evergreen Editor-in-Chief Gabrielle Bowman
•    I will be working with photographers to increase live photos.
•    A ban on using building photos has been put into place.
•    Focus on the news section, and having photographers work closely with reporters.
•    Struggling with reporters turning in stories on time.
•    Positive note: More staff members have been attending the group meetings
Question from Richard Miller – We talked previously about missing important stories, such as the downtown flooding and regents meeting. How do you plan on improving this?
Response from Gabby: In our general chat we’ve been asking the reporters what is wrong, what is happening to cause all the stories to be turned in past deadlines.  We’ve focused on photo and AP workshops. The stores are assigned on Google Sheets. Stories are being turned in late, which reduces the time to complete editing
Question from Richard Miller to Emma Ledbetter: As a former EIC, how would you help address these issues?
Response from Emma Ledbetter: Sound kind of harsh but I would look at writing people up, track who is pushing the deadlines.
Response from Gabby Bowman: We have written people up and had sit-down meetings with reporters. If we write up everyone and have to let them go, we will be down to little or no staff.  We are trying to find out what issues they are having in meeting the deadlines. 
Queston from Matt Haugen: Where do you draw the line between news and opinion stories? We’ve had several stories with clear opinion in them.
Response from Gabby:  I have noticed there have been stories placed under news that should be tagged as an opinion piece. I’ve put notes on the stories for the editors to address. 
Comments from Richard Miller: Some of the stories are still tagged under news. It looks like we need more follow-through in addressing these and other issues.
Most newsrooms have a print production deadline of Monday to submit stories for Thursday paper. I suggest you push back our story deadline to Mondays to give more time to edit, and to follow-up with sources.   We have just passed the halfway mark  in our print production this semester, and we need to get this sorted and fixed.  
Lorena O’English: I suggest we review progress on these issues at our next board meeting in March.

Yearbook editor Faith Simon
•    Our team sent out emails to the Greek Community, good response in them sending in photos
•    All the pages are laid out, waiting for photos and text. The deadline is Feb.  28.
•    A master document with 238 pages is complete
•    We posted yearbook page layouts on Instagram and put a link encouraging visitors to the Instagram page to purchase a yearbook
•    Section editors have been slacking off and we’re pushing editors to meet their deadlines
Question from Richard Miller to Matt Haugen: This is the first full year we’ve been selling the yearbooks online. Would it be feasible to post the cover of the yearbook on the WSU Facebook page?
Response from Matt Haugen: I will look into it and get back to you

Design Editor Samantha Glenn
•    Editors need to reach out and let me know what their needs are for the newspaper
Comment from Lorena O’English: Would it be possible for you to also reach out to the editors?  Sammi confirmed yes.

Advertising Manager Richard Miller
•    Spring sales are doing well
•    Sold $7,950 in Summer Session online ads and rack cards
•    Sold over $6,000 in Planned Parenthood online and back page ads

Fiscal specialist K. Denise Boyd 
•    We are seeing a positive year-end projection as of January 31, 2025, in the amount of $44,000
Question from Matt Haugen: Where are we with our S&A request?
Response from Richard Miller: We were informally told our request was approved. It was for a 1.3% reduction. We should be good for the next fiscal year.

New Business 

Expand the Student Media Board by two members

Richard Miller: I suggest we increase the board membership by two positions. Along with increasing attendance, it would better reflect our current needs. We used to be  multidepartmental and needed a board that could provide more general oversight. Now, we’re mainly the Daily Evergreen, and having a board that’s focused more on journalism would be helpful. 

The qualifications for these new members would be reading the Evergreen regularly and having a passion for the future of journalism

Comment from Matt Haugen: How would we go about finding the people to fill these new positions?

Response from Richard Miller: The board can suggest people to fill the positions. I also already have a few in mind, including our office manager, who has read the Evergreen every day for 39 years, and possibly either a retired Murrow professor or our former director, who’s now a downtown business owner.

A vote was taken and the motion passed.

Daily Evergreen website

Lorena O’English spoke about the online Daily Evergreen and noticed there are a lot of old items on the site:

•    Multimedia section has stories a year old
•    Sports section: You must scroll down towards the end of the section to find the current stories
•    Research section has stories from 2022
•    Can we can move the current stories to the top so readers can access them easier?

Comment from Matt Haugen: I’ve noticed that Behind The Press hasn’t been updated since May 2024, Is there a way we can turn off the sections that are outdated or not used?

Response from Gabby Bowman: Richard and I met with Aniah, our new multimedia editor; she still doesn’t have access to the email. 

Denise: If you are having issues with staff not having access to emails, just tell us so we can get things fixed. 

Response from Richard Miller: We don’t really need a multimedia web section since we don’t produce multimedia nor have a multimedia editor. Aniah and I had planned to fix these things, but Aniah has stopped responding to my messages. We also paid for her to take the SNO design course, but, again, no word on whether that was done. 

Response from Lorena O’English: I suggest the issues brought up at this meeting be revisited at our March meeting.  We are going to be holding editor elections then, and we need to ensure things are in order for the incoming leadership.

Public/Board comments: 

•    Levi Coovert, Evergreen sports editor: The problems that have been brought up about the writers not turning in the stories on time are due to laziness, and lack of responsibility 
•    Kedzie Moe: Gabby and I are both very aware of the issues and have been working hard on fixing them for the entire year. 

Next board meeting: Thursday, March 27

The meeting adjourned at 5 p.m.
Minutes taken by Denise Boyd