Press Release

IT’S ELECTION TIME! TEN BOARD POSITIONS UP FOR GRABS

Election time for positions on the NAHJ Board of Directors is upon us again. We would like to encourage regular and student members in good standing willing to work on strengthening our 1,500-member organization to run for office. Lifetime members who also fulfill the requirements needed to sit on the board of directors are also welcome to run for office. Academic members may vote, but may not run for office.

The positions to be elected this year are as follows:

Region Directors: all are two-year terms.

Region 1. Caribbean -- Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands
Region 2. Northeast -- Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont
Region 3. Mid-Atlantic -- Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington D.C., West Virginia
Region 4. South -- Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee
Region 5. South Central -- Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas
Region 6. Midwest -- Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin
Region 7. Southwest -- Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming
Region 8. Pacific -- Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Oregon, Washington
Student Representative (one-year term)

Secretary (one-year term to fill a vacancy)

As a board member, you will be required to attend three board meetings a year, typically held in three different cities for at least two days, including a board meeting during the annual convention. You will also be required to be on occasional conference calls with the board and spend time doing committee work.

Nominating Procedure

For the Secretary position, the candidate must submit nominating petitions with 25 signatures from regular, lifetime and academic voting members in good standing, which can be faxed in. Petitions submitted by email must come directly from the members nominating the candidates. Petitions for the Student Representative position should follow the same procedure, but nominating petitions should be from student members in good standing. Nominating petitions should faxed to (202) 662-7144 and email petitions should be sent to Paulo Luizaga at pluizaga@nahj.org. For the Region Director positions, candidates should follow the same procedure except they must submit petitions from ten (10) members in good standing or 10 percent of the region’s membership, whichever is less.

All petitions MUST be received in the NAHJ national office by Wednesday, June 10 by 5 p.m. EST. To run for office, to submit valid nominating petitions and(or) to vote in the election, you must be a member in good standing by Monday, June 8, 2009.

Please ensure that your petitions are turned in well in advance of the June 10 deadline. The membership status of those who sign the petition will be verified. If a person who signed is not a member in good standing, that signature will be ruled invalid. If there is time, the candidate can forward additional signatures to meet the requirement, but all signatures must be submitted by the deadline.

All petitions should include the printed name, signature and contact e-mail or phone number of each member endorsing the nomination.

A sample petition submitted by email could read as follows:

I (STATE YOUR NAME), of (COMPANY THEY WORK FOR OR OTHER FORM OF IDENTIFYING EMPLOYMENT) support the candidacy of _________________ for (position) ____________________ in the 2009 election of the NAHJ Board of Directors. This statement counts as my virtual signature and I have included my full contact information below.

A sample petition submitted by fax could read as follows:

I (STATE YOUR NAME)________________, of (COMPANY THEY WORK FOR OR OTHER FORM OF IDENTIFYING EMPLOYMENT)____________________ support the candidacy of _________________ for (position) ________________ in the 2009 election of the NAHJ Board of Directors.

(Under this, SIGN name, DATE the signature, WRITE CONTACT email and phone number. Then fax it.)

A sample petition submitted by fax with more than one signature could read as follows:

We, the undersigned, support the candidacy of __________________________ for (Position)_____________________________ in the 2009 election of the NAHJ Board of Directors.

(Under this, PRINT name, SIGN name, STATE their employer, DATE the signature, WRITE CONTACT email and phone. Then it should be faxed.)

Election procedure: Once nominating submissions are received and the ballot is set with the official candidates, all members will be notified by mail and email of the details of the election and the ballot. The elections will be held by electronic ballot, but members who request a paper ballot will receive one. Regular, Academic and Lifetime members will be only be eligible to vote for the Secretary position and the Region Director of their respective region. Student members will only be eligible to vote for the Student Representative position. The elections will officially open JUNE 29, 2009 and will close at NOON, on WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 2008. The results will be announced on July 17, 2009.

REMINDERS:

- Deadlines are the date and time by which the document must be RECEIVED by the national office. A postmark is not sufficient.

- Verify the validity of the signatures with the national office well in advance of the deadline to allow yourself sufficient time to secure additional, valid signatures to ensure you meet the election requirements. For a list of current members for your region, contact Paulo Luizaga at (202) 662-7460 or at pluizaga@nahj.org..

-You may want to submit more than the signatures required to ensure you have enough.

Founded in 1984, NAHJ's mission is to increase the percentage of Latinos working in our nation's newsrooms and to improve news coverage of the Latino community. NAHJ is the nation's largest professional organization for Latino journalists with more than 2,300 members working in English and Spanish-language print, photo, broadcast and online media. NAHJ is a 501 (c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit organization. For more information, visit www.nahj.org.