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AAJA
electing new officers The
Asian American Journalists Association is expected to elect new officers
for the posts of national vice president for print and national secretary.
The winners will be announced at the Unity '99 convention. Aki
Soga, an association board member for four years, is running for the position
of national vice president for print. Janet Cho, currently national secretary,
is making a bid to stay in office for another term. Both are running uncontested. "I
think I have something to give back to the organization in a leadership
position," said Soga, who has been a member for nearly 10 years.
"[Running for office] seems to be a logical continuation of the work
we've been doing on the board," he said. As
vice president for print, Soga, business editor at the Burlington Free
Press, intends to play a large role in a proposed restructuring of the
board. "Reconstruction is something I've been working on as a board
member," he said. Soga
said that he would like to continue pursuing the project. The aim is to
make the board run "better, smoother and [be] more responsive to
the needs of the organization," he said. Soga
has been involved in watching the media for accurate reporting of Asian
American issues. This is his third year as head of the Media Watch. He
said that he would like to continue to "work to increase its effectiveness
and increase its profile and AAJA's profile." Soga
also listed financial stability of the organization as one of his primary
goals. The
outgoing vice president for print is Victor Panichkul, the features design
director at The Baltimore Sun. Panichkul said that he was not running
because he wanted to focus on the many at The Sun entails. Panichkul
said that his experience in office was "very positive." He highly
recommended the entire experience, saying, "It's an opportunity to
develop your leadership skills, network with people at a much higher level." Cho,
a metro reporter at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is running for reelection
as national secretary and says she "had a wonderful experience the
first time. I learned more than I thought I would." Prior to joining the Plain Dealer in February, Cho was a city news
reporter at the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for three years. She
also mentioned the proposed reorganization of the board as a priority.
"[The board] is on the verge of change. We just hired a new executive
director who plans to streamline operations," she said, referring
to Rene Astudillo. Cho
said she is very excited about the Unity convention, which brings together
Asian American, Hispanic, black and Native American journalists. "[We
are] looking forward to building a lot of things that are happening at
Unity," she said. Cho believes that the convention will bring together
journalists of color to "work together with a lot more effort, lot
more supportive of each other." "This
is just the beginning of what we want to accomplish," Cho said of
the weeklong convention. "Unity is just the jumping point for all
the good things that are happening in this industry." The
elections will proceed in a continuous ballot until tomorrow when the
annual awards banquet is scheduled to be held. The
board's other three positions of national president, national vice president
of broadcast and treasurer will be up for re-election next year. Catalina
Camia, Traci Tong and Mark Watanabe hold those offices.
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