DURHAM, NC (December 1, 2007) – Here are the candidates for Director and Associate Director in Region 5 and Region 11’s online election, which will take place during the month of January. The candidates have provided their own statements and biographies (below) for voter consideration.
Balloting for Regional elections takes place through the member’s only area of the NPPA Web site. Results for Regions 5 and 11 will be announced early in February, says 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.
Regional elections for Regions 3 and 7 are currently underway. Elections for Regions 1 and 9 will be scheduled once those Regions field candidates for each office.
Vote online (starting January 1st).
In 2006 I was appointed Associate Director of Region 5 and a short time later I was at the NPPA Board Meeting in Tampa representing Region 5. Those few days gave me a good understanding of how the NPPA works and motivated me to work hard to represent the members from Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
In October of 2007 the NPPF TV Airborne Seminar came to Des Moines. I was the local chair of that event and my employer, WHO-TV, hosted. I think it's important to hold national events close to our members so I pushed to hold the Airborne in Region 5. I want to be sure to use the funds the region has help sponsor more seminars in the region, either with the state chapters or an annual region-wide seminar that would move from city to city through the region, or both.
Earlier this year Gregory Morley resigned and I became Director of Region 5. There haven't been many issues to deal with in the time since then outside of finding volunteers to serve as Associate Director and Job Information Bank Chair of the region.
I was R5's Job Information Bank Chair for the last 2 years. That position is one that really matters because it helps member find jobs.
My wife of 30 years, Deb, has been a great supporter of my career and my volunteer efforts for the NPPA. I have two sons, 21-year-old Nathan and Michael, who is 20. My extended family is the staff at WHO who I do my best to keep challenged and content.
It's been a pleasure to represent Region 5 for the last almost 2 years and I would be glad to be your Director for the next two years.
I first joined the NPPA back in the late 80's early 90's as a student at the University of Nebraska. I learned about the NPPA as a freshman when I attended my first Flying Short Course in Chicago. Fast forward to 2001, I had been in the suburbs of Chicago for more than 2 years and was asked to help run the short course in Milwaukee, after years of attending Short Courses, I had come to realize that none of this happens without volunteers, so I said yes. Besides, how do you say "No" to Bill Luster?
My professional career started in Topeka, KS as a staff photographer for first three years. In 1999, I moved to the Chicagoland area and then started a job with the then Copley Chicago Newspapers which was then purchased by the parent company of the Chicago Sun-Times. Two years ago I left Aurora and moved to the Northwest Herald as Photo Editor, shortly afterwards, becoming Group Photo Editor of the NorthWest News Group.
Vote online (starting January 1st).
I'm the picture editor of the Bellingham (WA) Herald. I was a full-time journalism educator for three years and still teach as an adjunct at Western Washington University (WWU). My master's degree is in Photography and Multimedia. Even as the paradigm of the news business is changing more quickly than ever before, I'm very excited by the synergies and by the possibilities.
I've been the Director of Region 11 for two years and I'm asking the members of Region 11 to re-elect me for one more two-year term.
Our regional membership has grown and in the last two years our region has hosted many of the NPPA's prestige educational events, including the NPPA's Photojournalism Summit, the Multimedia Immersion Program, the Flying Short Course, and the Team Story-Telling Workshop. Here in Bellingham we're into our third year of offering the Bellingham Visual Journalism Conference, Region 11's own educational event, and we've started a new student chapter of the NPPA at Bellingham's WWU's Journalism School. It's the first new student chapter to be started anywhere in country in several years. We've put new energy into our Region 11 website (www.nppa11.org) and have exciting plans to grow it even more by including more people news, new video clips and better reporting of regional events and issues of interest to regional members. We worked at bringing together Alaska, Oregon and Washington with British Columbia and Yukon Territories. I'd like to build more bridges between Canadian and American photojournalists.
Last year, I represented NPPA on a national level both at the NPPA Board of Directors' meeting and as one of the Chairs of the Photojournalism Summit that was held in May '07 in Portland, OR. I put together the speakers list for the still photography track. The event was described as "a home run" by some attendees. This year I've been named the Chair of the entire Photojournalism Summit in Louisville, which means I'll be overseeing the video track, the multimedia track as well as the still track. If you re-elect me as Director, I'll also be representing Region 11 at next year's annual Board of Directors meeting.
Thank you and sincerely,
Russ Kendall
Multimedia, multimedia, multimedia... It seems to be the word that everyone has been hearing over the past couple years. Our industry, whether it be print, television or Internet, struggles to grasp the outcome of this new publishing environment. I began my career, recruited out of the infant Web industry, to create our college online newspaper and develop "new media" at Washington State University.
Over my time at KATU television in Portland and currently with the Yakima Herald-Republic, I produced what once was labeled new media – focusing on combining text, photos, imagery and video – and now I find myself immersed in multimedia development as a mainstay in news presentation.
This new venture continues to be redefined by everyone in the industry. I feel that we, as NPPA members, should lead the multimedia momentum. However, that comes through training, networking, communicating and doing.
So far, many of us can say that training has came through hard knocks; repurposing technology and techniques created for Web development, television, print and radio, then applying it with spotty success.
My goal by serving as the associate director of Region 11 is to create learning opportunities, encourage experimentation through collaboration, develop a method for Region 11 to recognize individual multimedia efforts, and, ultimately, where we can learn what's 'new' about multimedia.
Over the past five years, I have had the fortune of working as a web producer at both a television station and newspaper. I continue to love challenging story-gathering situations where I use any available resource to shoot, write, edit, then publish as quickly as possible.
Contact national secretary Sean Elliot with any questions at secretary@nppa.org.
