Tag Archives: elections

NAHJ to Discuss the Power of the Latino Vote; Host Wine & Conversation Event in Atlanta

Posted on by
View Comments

Contact: Azuree Salazar, (202) 662-7482, asalazar@nahj.org

Washington, DC – Journalists from across the country, political strategists and activists, and members of the Latino community will gather in Atlanta next week for a Town Hall meeting to discuss the power of the Latino vote just days before polls open for the mid-term elections.

The Town Hall titled “The Power of the Latino Vote” will officially open the NAHJ Region 4 Conference, which will also tackle immigration coverage, the globalization of news, the future of Hispanic media, new technologies used in media, and feature training sessions in video storytelling and writing in Spanish.

Conference attendees and the general public are encouraged to attend the Town Hall to be held Friday, October 29, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center, International Ballroom B. Immediately following the Town Hall, NAHJ will host its first Wine & Conversation event from 8 p.m. until 10 p.m. at the World of Coca-Cola (121 Baker Street).

The NAHJ Region 4 Conference will continue the following day at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center. For the complete program and to register, click here.

“Journalists are coming in from 12 states, Puerto Rico and Mexico, and this is a wonderful opportunity for NAHJ to engage the Atlanta community in a conversation that is so timely,” said Iván Román, NAHJ’s Executive Director. “Our mission is to fight for fair coverage of Latinos, and most times when we’re successful, it started by giving a voice to the community.”

At the Town Hall, moderator Inés Ferré, a freelance reporter for CNN, will have panelists from the left, right and middle discuss their perspective on Latino participation in this year’s elections and the impact that the growing number of anti-immigration laws such as Arizona’s SB 1070 could have at the polls.

The panelists include Democratic pollster and strategist Margie Omero, founder of the DC-based firm Monument Analysis, Georgia state Rep. Pedro “Pete” Marín, D-Gwinnett County; Danny Vargas, past president of the National Republican Hispanic Assembly, Jerry Gonzalez, Executive Director for the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO), Texas state Rep. Pete Gallego and Juan Carlos Lopez, Senior Political Anchor at CNN en Español.  

Right after what is sure to be a spirited discussion at the Town Hall, the journalists and the Atlanta community in attendance are invited to NAHJ’s first Wine & Conversation event from 8 p.m. until 10 p.m. at the World of Coca-Cola (121 Baker Street NW). The requested donation for this event can be given in advance, by clicking here.

At the event attendees can offer donations to help NAHJ continue its work of giving scholarships to Latino students, training more Latinos in multimedia journalism and bringing the Parity Project’s advocacy for fairness in coverage to more cities.

The event is being graciously hosted by The Coca-Cola Company. Sponsors to-date include: Continental Airlines, the official sponsor of NAHJ Special Events.

For information on the Wine & Conversation event, please visit: http://www.nahj.org/2010/09/wine_conversation_atlanta/.

To RSVP for the Town Hall and the Wine & Conversation event, or to sponsor the Wine & Conversation event please email Azuree Salazar at asalazar@nahj.org by Monday, October 25, 2010.

Bylaws, Amendments – And an Apology to Our Students

Posted on by
View Comments

NAHJ President Michele Salcedo

Saludos:

We take bylaws very seriously at NAHJ. They and the statutes of California, where we are incorporated, are the foundation of our governance, the rules by which we operate.  

We also take elections very seriously, and our bylaws spell out who is eligible to hold which offices. They also specify the appointment of an Elections Committee to conduct and oversee the officer elections. The committee is solely responsible for making sure requirements for all candidates are met and the elections are fair.  

Unfortunately for the office of student representative, we failed in both areas.  

The board recently learned that Jacqueline Guzmán-García, the winner of the spirited three-way contest for student representative, was a part-time student at the time of the elections and did not fulfill the bylaws’ full-time enrollment requirement (Article 7, Section 3). This, of course, means that for the other two candidates, who were full-time students, the election results might have been quite different.  

While the Elections Committee thoroughly vetted the officer candidates, the student representative candidates were overlooked. Elections Committee Chair Dino Chiecchi is apologizing to the candidates for this oversight. I assure you, the board takes this failure in our system very seriously and will be looking at ways to make sure it does not happen again.  

On behalf of the NAHJ board, I want to extend my most sincere apology to Jackie and to the other two student rep candidates: José Antonio Acevedo, 21, of the University of Puerto Rico and Alejandra Matos, 20, of the University of Texas at El Paso. Their deep disappointment is understandable, and we are sorry to have been the cause. I apologize as well to our student members, especially those who took the time to cast a ballot.  

Jackie, 27, is among NAHJ’s rising stars. She has received three scholarships from NAHJ – the Rubén Salazar Scholarship, the Geraldo Rivera Scholarship, and the María Elena Salinas Scholarship – and NAHJ is proud to have helped her to attend and graduate from California State University at Northridge, no small accomplishment. To satisfy her insatiable intellectual curiosity, Jackie continues taking classes at Santa Monica College and hopes to attend graduate school.  

At Cal State Northridge she remains the formidable force behind a 22-student strong NAHJ chapter preparing for certification, and she has spoken to students from different states about starting new chapters as well. She is also working with NAHJ Parity Project Director Kevin Olivas on a multimedia piece for the project’s website.  

The board regrets that because of our error in neglecting to determine Jackie’s ineligibility before the election that she cannot remain to serve with them now, and we have respectfully requested her resignation. That would allow the board to appoint a student representative to fill the remaining nine months of the term in time to attend the October board meeting in Atlanta. Students, which comprise nearly 40 percent of our membership, would continue to have a voice and a vote – under the newly passed amendment – on the national board.  

Because we know Jackie to be a woman of character, we are confident she will do the right thing and hope she will not only continue her work with Latino students on behalf of NAHJ but run for the national board in the future.  

Click here to view open letter to NAHJ students.

I also wanted to update you on implementation of the other two amendments passed in June, one to create an academic officer position and the second to elevate the at-large officer for new media position to a vice president for online. 

Because the amendments as written and passed included no instructions on their implementation, we consulted our lawyer, Michael Lefever of Covington & Burling, as we did on the student representative situation. He’s a former Securities and Exchange Commission staffer who’s agreed to work with us pro bono specifically on governance issues – his expertise. Here’s what he advised us on the amendments:  

The bylaws say that members must vote directly to fill vacancies in officer positions (unless the vacancy is created by a resignation). Members can vote to fill the academic officer slot for one year during the regional director elections in June 2011, and then for a two-year term with the other officers in 2012.  

But creating and filling the vice president for online isn’t as simple as elevating the at-large officer for new media. Here’s why:  

Although the intent is clear, the language of the amendment is not. Mr. Lefever also advises us that the bylaws require that the new position can only be filled by a vote of the members.  

Mr. Lefever recommends that we clarify the language of the amendment to abolish the at-large officer for new media position and establish the vice president for online as an officer of the corporation. Contingent on its passage, qualified candidates would be nominated and run for the new office in 2011 for a one-year term. Members would vote on the clarified amendment and elect the VP for online during next year’s regional elections. The office would open again during 2012 elections, when qualified candidates would run for a two-year term along with the other officers.  

I want to thank Patricio Espinoza, who continues as at-large officer for new media, for his enormous patience and understanding during the seemingly endless process of finding an attorney, the analysis of the amendments and our bylaws and recommendation. I know it isn’t the answer Patricio wanted, but he is a man of honor who believes strongly in good governance and in NAHJ. And for that I am grateful and honored to be serving with him on the board. Thank you, Patricio.  

And thanks to all of you for your confidence and forbearance as we work to get NAHJ back on track. Toward that end, Mr. Lefever is reviewing the bylaws to clean up inconsistencies and recommend any changes so we stand on a strong legal framework that allows us to serve you, the members, as best we can.  

Michele Salcedo
President
National Association of Hispanic Journalists

It’s Election Time! Ten Board Positions Up For Grabs

Posted on by
View Comments

Attention Members: 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.

Media Contact: Iván Román, (202) 662-7178