Charles Apple

It’s been an unusual year for the Society for News Design. The president resigned, somewhat under fire. That’s never happened before. Upon his resignation, the president of the foundation, the publications director and one of the regional directors also left (Three other prominent regional directors had already departed for other reasons).

The society looked at options for its upcoming elections and decided to conduct it as usual — with each candidate — vice-president, secretary/treasurer — moving up a notch on the ballot and running unopposed. Which angered a large group of vocal members who were calling for open elections and alternative names on the ballot.

This morning, though, Kris Viesselman — Director of Digital Product Development for National Geographic Maps in Washington, D.C. — announced her candidacy for a presidential write-in campaign.

Kris teaching in Manila, March 2007.
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In just the first few hours after it went public, the campaign gathered a lot of momentum. As of 3 p.m., Kris had 34 detailed endorsements posted at her campaign site and 48 names of folks pledging support. (Full disclosure here: I’m one of the latter; I would have been glad to join the former had I been asked.)

Our favorite endorsement so far, by Harris Siegel:

Quite simply, she’s a great person … I’d wager my Gannett stock that you’ll agree.

Heh…

Despite her busy day, Kris took a few minutes to answer a few questions for us:

Q. Why this? Why now?

A. For a few weeks, a variety of people had encouraged me to throw my hat in the ring. To be honest, my first response was something like “Are you crazy?”. Then a few more people asked. These were all folks who I highly respected–and trusted. Eventually, I realized that I wanted to be part of the solution. This group of people (past and present members) has meant too much to all of us to take a passive approach to curing Society and industry ills. Jobs have been lost,  our careers are changing quickly. We need to be the architects of our own future. We have a unique opportunity to work together to help shape the future of visual communication and journalism.

Q. You’ve never been on the SND board. Will you be lacking experience you’d need to lead the society this year?

A. I’ve already received significant wise guidance from past presidents and dedicated current board members. I would expect that to continue and increase. However, the Society should be more dialed in to its members’ wishes, too. I’ve started to reach out to former, present and potential members to see what they’d like see in their SND. We will cast a broad net to include people working in a variety of mediums, at various stages of their careers and speaking a variety of languages.

Finally, I’d say that we all know that sometimes “experience” also means stubborn inertia and protection of the status quo.

Q. You won’t be appearing on the ballot. You’re a write-in candidate. Realistically, does that give you much of a chance?

A. Yeah, maybe I am crazy. It’s tricky to be sure. We’ll be giving clear instructions on how to make a write-in vote. One thing is clear, there is a groundswell of support for democracy. No matter the result, we are successfully elevating the discussion of ideas.

Kris and fellow speaker Tonia Cowan of the
Toronto Globe and Mail. Manila, March 2007.
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Q. You’ve stated your goals clearly and succinctly on the site. What’s job one?

A. Clearly, we need immediate triage to stop the rapid membership decline. We also need to provide more training and networking support to our members. We’ve outlined a number of ideas, but I want to stay open to others. Further prioritizing will unfold once we’ve had a chance to hear from everyone.

Q. Under the Viesselman administration, how will the Society earn back the trust of its members?

A. Actions always speak louder than words.

Q. That’s a hell of a web site you have there. The McCain/Palin ticket would have been fortunate to have you as their campaign manager. Did you design it yourself or did you have help?

A. Hah! somehow I don’t think I would’ve been at the top of their contact list. But seriously, I’ve had a lot of help! I’d like to maintain a little mystery for now. But very soon, I will have a long list of people to publicly thank. Frankly, it’s been overwhelming. The past few days have really illustrated how a group of passionate, generous people can make a big impact. I hope this is just the beginning.

I’m currently writing a big “What’s Next for SND” article for the next issue of the society’s Design magazine (which, yes, will most likely hit your mailbox after the elections). In fact, I had to take a break from that work to get this posted today. It’s too late to add your voice to the print piece, but if you’d like to add your voice to my collection of 58 (so far) essays, comments, suggestions and complaints, feel free.

Find Kris’ candidacy web page here. Find her Facebook support group here and her Twitter page here.

Find our earlier coverage of SND’s disastrous summer here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Society for News Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.