President's Message | February 25, 2020

ERICA JONES

You may have seen the news that ACM North East Chair Erica Jones is leaving her position at Somerville Media Center and will be saying farewell to volunteering with the Region in coming days.
It’s been a gas working with Erica the past decade as she has grown in her work as a community media practitioner and a colleague.  She also is a tireless volunteer – even to the extent that she organized and then went on the road with me for a week last year on our ACM Roadshow to five different states!
Thanks for your devotion to the field, your thoughtfulness and your friendship, Erica. Let’s say this is “so long”, not goodbye!  

FEBRUARY WEBINAR RECAP

A big thank you to everyone who joined our webinar last week on journalism collaborations – if you missed the webinar, you can find a recording here (and in fact, you can find a library of webinar content on the website!).

Antoine Haywood is conducting a survey on community news and PEG operations as a follow up to the webinar that’s part of his research on community media at the Annenberg School. Take a few minutes to fill out the survey to let him know your perspectives on producing and supporting news in your community. His deadline is May 1.
MARCH WEBINAR
Our next webinar is March 18, when we’ll talk about best practices for underwriting programs.  We’ll look at a couple of working examples of stations that are succeeding as they bring revenue into their organizations through underwriting – and we’ll talk about best practices you can adapt and adopt at your organization.  I hope you’ll join us – Register today!

ACM WEST CONFERENCE

It was great to see friends and colleagues and meet new folks at the ACM West Conference in Monterey CA last week.  I was particularly struck by several presentations by organizations that were making strategic choices to change their direction and build their future – whether it be by changing their Boards of Directors or having difficult conversations about how to change the way they do their work.

My thanks to the ACM West Board of Directors for the invitation and for putting together such a great conference!

 Mike Wassenaar
President & CEO
The Alliance for Community Media