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CUNY Graduate Center Doctoral Students’ Council Media Board Minutes—Draft November 9, 2007 Chair: Rob Faunce (RF) Present: Rob Faunce (RF) Ericka Calton (by proxy: Paul McBreen PM), Gregory Donovan (GD), Chong Wojtkowski (CW) Absent: Celia Braxton Guest: Denise Torres Meeting Secretary: Chong Wojtkowski Quorum sufficient to conduct business Meeting commenced at 6:18pm I. Approval of Agenda CW motions to approve agenda; GD seconds. Moved by unanimous consent. II. Designation of Meeting Secretary. CW volunteers to take minutes with no opposition. III. Advocate Report RF gives the Advocate report for James Hoff. There were 394 new visitors to the Advocate website on the day the last issue of the newspaper came out (10/10). James provided statistics on web traffic to the site in his report. IV. Budget priorities. a. James would like to publish an extra issue this year, online only and for the month of May, to bring the total number of issues for 2007-2008 to seven. The money for the May issue, 3,480$, would come from the DSC webmaster budget which is no longer needed due to the restructuring of the website. This is less 405 for printing costs.
b. Discussion of Budget priorities- GD feels paper issues are important, but since the Advocate website received about 3000+ hits so far, asks if one day the Advocate will be a web-only publication. PM states that the Media Board could vote to increase the yearly number of issues provided that there were a
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concerted effort to distribute the Advocate to all campuses, and prove the absolute presence of issues at all the programs. DT commented that she approached JH with this concern regarding the Social Welfare program, and JH responded immediately. DT mentioned that the continuous visual presence of the paper issues in the same spot in a program office is important. PM states that since the Advocate is a DSC medium and funded by the DSC, we can use it to increase our presence at the GC and on other campuses and at other programs that we have had difficulty reaching for representation purposes. GD states that the Media Board could use the “extra” 400 (i.e. less costs for publication for a web-only issue) to do outreach, extra circulation, perhaps visiting campuses et cetera. CW notes that this could help get more writers, particularly from programs that either have not had representation or that have never written for the paper. RF draws the discussion back to the budget; the Media Board discusses whether to recommend funding an 8th issue which would either come out in May or December for 2008-2009. The issue is that if there were to be an 8th issue, the money would have to come from another place on the budget and thus the plenary would have to agree to finding approximately 1000$ more. CW mentions a concern, that the Advocate budget represents over 30K dollars and is the second most costly budget item, and that the Advocate employee stipends are more than the co-chairs’ stipends. It is discussed whether, one day, a cap should be placed on the Advocate budget. DT mentions that if the issue were to come out in December, JH could easily find ad revenue for holiday shopping, etc. If it were a May issue, the DSC could publicize new representatives, meeting dates, etc for the following year. PM suggests that each Media Board member speak for or against increasing the budget for a) December print issue for 2008 or b) a May online issue for 2008. GD says that he would be fine with a December issue, but it makes sense to have a May online issue seeing as the money is already there and can be easily and logically moved to the Advocate budget. PM supports a May issue and a print issue for December but not in May. RF supports a web May issue. CW agrees. RF states for the record that seven issues of the Advocate will cost 26,150$, an increase of 3,000$. Motion GD motions that the Media Board recommend using the existing webmaster budget for this year to authorize a May online issue of The Advocate. The motion passes with unanimous consent.
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V. Discussion of Budget GD and DT state that the line-item “webmaster” on the DSC budget should be changed to “web consultants.” The MB deferred voting on our budget priorities for next year until the March 7 meeting. CW motions to adjourn, GD seconds. Meeting ends at 7:18pm. Respectfully Submitted, Chong J Wojtkowski