Association News

The first live chat will take place this Thursday, April 12, at 1 pm EDT, with subsequent sessions offered the first Thursday of each month at 1 pm. The format will sometimes be like a roundtable and other times will feature specific presenters or topics. This Thursday's session will focus on new technology and a discussion about future Webinar topics. Members with questions about the Webinars or suggestions regarding potential subjects for discussion should contact AAN Sales and Marketing Director Roxanne Cooper.

Only those members who complete a survey by Monday, April 2, will receive a copy of this valuable financial benchmarking study. For more information on the Financial Standards program, please contact the AAN office.

AAN launched a new web publishing blog today at web.aan.org. The blog is designed to be an in-depth, concrete resource on web publishing news, online innovations and journalism trends. For more information on the blog, visit the about page, the editorial policy, and the blog style guide. The blog coincides with the launch of other 2.0 AAN identities, such as the AAN MySpace account, del.ico.us account, and Flickr account. Recent posts on web.aan.org:

• Young journos fear dailies are dying
• Onion TV News Launching April ’07
• Tech to Watch: Twitter
• Small communities engage people
• How to generate traffic using social networks
• Eyetrack data: What users really see
• Fab Channel: Free, quality and LEGAL music concerts for your site
• Is it a blog if it’s being produced by a newspaper?

The Molly Ivins First Amendment Award will be presented at the AAN convention to a journalist or media figure who has taken a courageous stand challenging the preferred narrative of powerful government or private interests; whose reporting and/or commentary has had a profound impact on the public's understanding of the issue; and whose work embodies the spirit of Ivins' legacy -- speaking truth to power with wit and style. All AAN members are eligible to submit a nomination to web at aan.org. The deadline is Tuesday, April 2.

The best way to find out is to participate in our annual Financial Standards survey, a confidential benchmarking study that many AAN publishers consider the most important benefit the association offers to its members. AAN financial consultant Seija Goldstein will once again compile the survey and present the results -- to participants only -- at the annual convention, which will be held in Portland June 14-16. The deadline for participation is Monday, April 2. For more information on the survey, please contact the AAN office.

Newly elected Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), the first non-African American representative since 1974 from Tennessee's majority-black Ninth District, will keynote this weekend's staff-training conference, AAN announced today. Cohen served Memphis in the Tennessee State Senate for 24 years before replacing Harold Ford, Jr. as the city's congressman. For the first time since it premiered in 2004, attendance at AAN East is likely to exceed the total at AAN West, which was held in San Francisco in late January. MORE AAN EAST NEWS: Helen Sutton, who spoke in Little Rock at the 2006 convention and racked up one of the highest scores in the history of AAN's post-convention survey, has been confirmed as the sales-track speaker on Friday afternoon.

Those eligible to join the list include AAN-member publishers and senior managers, financial managers, design & production managers and staff, and electronic publishing and IT personnel. To sign up, login to this Web site and click on "Listserv Registrations" in the My AAN section of the navigation bar on the right side of each page. As with all of AAN's listservs, messages sent to the list are archived on the site and available for search by members of the list.