Region 8 Director, Associate Director, Candidates Announced
DURHAM, NC (June 28, 2007) – These are the candidates for director and associate director in Region 8’s online election, which takes place during July. The candidates have provided their own statements and biographies for voter consideration (below).
Balloting for regional elections takes place through the member’s only area of the NPPA Web site. Voting for Region 8 officers may be done at any time starting July 2 and going through the end of the month. Region 8 election results will be announced early in August by NPPA national secretary Sean D. Elliot.
Eligible voters who want to request a paper ballot may do so by calling the NPPA national office at +1.919.383.7246, extension 14.
In this round of voting, Region 8 members will vote online to elect a director (who serves on the NPPA’s board of directors) and an associate director (who acts as regional membership officer and as a stand-in for a board member who is unable to attend the annual June meeting).
Region 8 director Tim Jones is running against candidate Steve Traynor for director, and Matt Snider is running for associate director.
Here are the candidates and their statements:
Tim Jones
"Many of you knew me as the Job Information Bank guy back before I was elected director for this Region in the last election. I have been a newspaper photojournalist, wire service correspondent, freelancer and college professor."
"As a longtime member, like many of you I noticed that NPPA was beginning to fail our membership, no longer providing the leadership and value that this great organization had always stood for. The organization no longer appeared to have a clear vision for the future, and instead seemed to be going into survival mode, from cutting back on important benefits (like publications, the annual book) to no longer wisely investing the members’ dues into an agenda for the future of the profession. Apathy was rampant.
"Having been a member for 20 years, I could no longer sit on the sidelines and watch without trying to help chart a course correction for this great organization … one being marginalized by mismanagement, poor organization, and more importantly than anything else, a lack of vision both for the present and the future.
"I was warned by several colleagues that anyone looking to change this organization would encounter entrenched resistance from the top down, and that changing an organization that had become increasingly set in its inefficient and indifferent ways would be met with serious resistance. I had no idea how right they were. Change can be painful and difficult sometimes, but our organization needed to in order to survive. It still needs to.
"While some improvements have been made, I am still unsatisfied with the progress we are making. You should be too. We cannot continue to raise dues and cut back services/benefits just to survive. We can and should be more than just another professional organization … we need to be the voice for photojournalism around the world. We need to set the agenda for photojournalism, not just play catch up and follow trends. While we are continually trying to add value to the services we offer, we need to start looking at how the future of our profession should be affecting our role as the leader of that future. We need to start being proactive, not just reactive.
"Actions such as raising dues without adding significant benefits, and freezing regional budgets at a time when we need more action, not less, are short-sighted at best, and potentially lethal to our organization. This mindset needs to change. I was the ONLY regional director to vote against the 2006 budget because I could not in good conscience vote to increase dues with nothing significant to show for it. Now, partially as a result of that dues increase, membership has declined. We needed to be better stewards your money. We still need to do more … you deserve more for your money, and the profession deserves more from its leadership.
"I am excited to be working with our new associate director Matt Snider; he shares a new vision for the future of this organization, and this Region. I intend to be working closely with him and others around the Region to bring improvements at the Regional level, as well as an agenda at the national level. While we have held multiple NPPA events in the Region since I became director (in Austin, Santa Fe, and Fort Worth), we need to do more … much more.
"We need to invest more in our Regions, not freeze regional budgets and cut back benefits. This coming year I hope to get our Regional publication back up (albeit in electronic form), improve our Web site, and start having more local events throughout the region where members can get together to network, to train, to relax and speak openly about what THEY need to see from the organization that represents them to the world.
"Leadership needs to stand up for our members and represent their needs, their interests … their voices. I hear those voices … individually and as an organization. I want to be there to continue to fight for your voice, and ours."
Steve Traynor
"I have been involved in the journalism industry for over 15 years, serving as a staff photographer at a small Kentucky newspaper, as well as teaching journalism and advising award-winning student publications before coming to Region 8 as a photographer for the Killeen Daily Herald in Texas."
"Exciting things are on the horizon, and Region 8 has a tremendous amount of talented journalists, many of whom are long time NPPA members. In the last 10 years, our industry has evolved, changing the way we all do business. These changes have brought new challenges to many of our colleagues to learn new ways of communication. I believe the NPPA is assisting with many of these changes: in sponsoring workshops, flying in guest speakers to conduct seminars in new media, and providing sources to communicate with each other. Our national organization has worked tirelessly to keep up with the times.
"But I also believe that in order to maintain a national organization’s strength, we must work on the local level to rally the troops. I know many of you may not have been pleased with the membership price increase, and funding at the Regional level is not what it used to be. I hope to make every dollar count by coordinating a network of Regional photographers to speak to each other about changing media and how to implement it at your paper, and conduct gatherings to maintain connections beyond emails and phone calls. Anita Baca has done a great job with our Web site, and I hope to get more funding to make it the best in the organization. If we can build and succeed at the local level, it will only help make the national organization stronger.
"I hope I can count on your support."
(In addition to shooting, Traynor is now also the photography editor for the Killeen Daily Herald.)
Matt Snider
Matt Snider lives in the suburbs of Fort Worth, TX, but he was born in the Bronx. He became interested in photography and journalism while in junior high school and carried that interest into high school and college, working on and contributing to various school and community publications. Throughout high school and part-time during college, he assisted his late brother Ed, a well-known New York freelance photographer, in the operation of his practice. With the help and direction of his brother, Matt sold his first spot news photos to the New York Daily News at the age of 16 and has been enamored of freelance photojournalism ever since.
College led to business interests as Matt enjoyed a career as a management consultant for several large accounting and law firms specializing in operations and compliance of tax-exempt organizations and trusts under Section 501(c) of the tax code. Due to Matt’s deep interest in computers, he became involved in the then nascent computer user group movement in the 1980’s. He assisted many such groups around the U.S. in structuring and conforming their operations to meet the requirements of the law to become tax exempt as educational and membership organizations. He has also served as president, vice president, corporate secretary, executive director, incorporator and board member of several large 501(c) educational organizations.
However, the call of the camera and the emerging digital age compelled Matt to merge those two interests and pursue his early passion as a freelance photographer and journalist. As a result, Matt now works extensively with small market community newspapers in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex. He provides both reporting and photojournalism services where needed and computer and network support services to the print and Internet media.
Matt was appointed the associate director of Region 8 by Tim Jones in February 2007. He attended the annual board of directors meeting in Portland representing Region 8, authored the initial discussion draft of a proposal to develop an NPPA-sponsored ethics certification program for photojournalists and was named to the study committee to further develop the proposal. Matt is looking forward to helping the NPPA deepen its already excellent programs and extend its reach and influence internationally over the next decade. He also hopes his beloved New York Yankees can turn the 2007 season around. Matt is married and has four children and is completing his masters in journalism at the University of North Texas.
If you have any questions about the election, please contact NPPA national secretary Sean D. Elliot at secretary@nppa.org.
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