INBA members: Step up and help chart our future
Nominate yourself or someone else to run for a seat on the INBA executive board
By Jason Piscia
INBA President
Last month, the Illinois News Broadcasters Association board unanimously voted to modernize the process that elects our organization’s officers and board members.
We’re launching that new process this week, and we need all INBA voting members to be involved.
Instead of our traditional election process — collecting nominations and holding a vote all in one day in person at a fall convention — we’re moving the operation online over a two-month period so we can get more people involved.
From now until Aug. 28, all INBA voting members can fill out this form to nominate someone to run for one of our five officer positions (president, VP, treasurer, executive secretary and recording secretary) or one of the three open board seats. Officers serve one-year terms. Board members serve two-year terms.
Members are free to nominate themselves. If you nominate someone else, we’ll check with the nominee to make sure they’re willing to take the position if they win.
I can confirm that aside from the board seats, we are expecting open seats on the officer level. So we need every INBA member — whether you’re a new member or a longtime one, an active member who attends our events or one who has yet to get themselves plugged into INBA activities, an early career journalist or one who’s been around a bit — to strongly consider whether they can serve on the board in the year ahead.
The time commitment for the INBA board is manageable. We hold four meetings per year (mostly via Zoom on weekends). From there, members can add on much or as little as they want by becoming involved in one of our committees that address various issues and organizational tasks or by helping plan an in-person INBA event.
Like the industry we work in, our organization is at a crossroads. We need fresh ideas for how INBA can best serve its members and broadcast journalism. We want some new and energetic voices involved in those conversations so that the diversity of our membership is represented. That happens when new people join our board.
Once the nomination window closes on Aug. 28, we’ll build an online ballot, and members can anonymously vote once during the month of September. We’ll announce the winners at our fall event in East Peoria on Sept. 26.
If you have questions about any of this — nominating, running for a board seat, voting etc. — please reach out to me at jason.piscia@inba.net or Laura Trendle Polus, our nominations and elections chair, at lmtrend@ilstu.edu. We’re happy to discuss how you can help us chart the future of INBA.