November 2009
November 25, 2009 - How not to manage a website
Back on October 14th the KDNA executive director and her Board of Directors staged the “unveiling” of their new website – a website that the ED had been supposedly “working on” for the last year, and that Jorge Lobos the Board Chair said they were paying $7,000 to build. Within minutes it crashed. Two days later the ED spoke to a gathering in Yakima, meeting to discuss Hispanics and the Internet, and talked as if she had an active website, when, in fact, she had produced nothing.
It was a month before the “site” returned and was to any degree accessible. And now, what you see are predominantly pages “under construction” and broken links. Where there is “content” it is incomplete: “Staff and Volunteers” is mostly about the ED and there are no volunteers, Board members are missing from the Board list, the History is inaccurate, etc. There is really not enough there to characterize as a “website”. The only difference between this one and the old one for which Gabriel Martinez paid $15,000, is that Gabriel’s looked professional, and that now there is a link to streaming.
One thing clear is that the ED and whomever she has building this thing are over their heads, and have no idea of quality or quality control. The incident earlier this week points to the lack of professionalism and competence of the ED and the Board of Directors that do not seem to pay any attention to what happens to “their” organization. In other words, nobody is watching the store.
Unfortunately there are just as many scammers and exploiters on the web, on the internet, willing to take advantage of people’s ignorance as there are in the rest of the world. Anyone with an email account knows about unwanted spam email, and knows they need to exercise precautions in opening strange emails to avoid virus’s and trojan’s invading their computer. Any real website developer or manager knows you don’t release the site until it is ready, not before you have security precautions in place to prevent unwanted use of your site, and certainly not before you have monitoring in place so that you know if something undesirable has happened to your site.
Fernandez, for all her “age of technology” bravado, knows nothing about any of what she is doing, and the result was this embarrassing incident, that she is trying to blame on those people that want only to restore the radio station to the level of community service and competence they enjoyed prior to her regime. Here we have yet another example of Fernandez blaming others for her own failures.
Forums are prime targets for spammers to post unwanted advertising. “Spam robots”, computers running applications to post this content, search the web continuously for websites and forums that are poorly protected. When they find a site that lets them in, they post their advertising. The only way to stop them is to have competent web developers and site managers that pay attention. I’ll leave it to you to judge what KDNA has.
Here’s the news story from KNDO (there's a short commercial before the news starts): Explicit comments stir up controversy on KDNA's website
And if you want to see Fernandez boasting of her accomplishments.
November 9, 2009 - Will arrogance destroy KDNA?
It has been 17 months since the NCEC/KDNA Board of Directors appointed Maria Fernandez Executive Director. We are still waiting for either the Board or for Fernandez to articulate a vision for the future. Or, for the present for that matter. It doesn't seem as if they have a plan, beyond replacing all the dedicated and experienced staff and terminating volunteers, alienating listeners and supporters, abandoning the collaborative relationships that KDNA has shared with community and governmental organizations, driving off the farmworker clients for whom the station was built, and going broke.
Unh, is that the plan? We don't fall for conspiracy theories easily, but it is darned hard to believe that so many bad things could befall KDNA in a little over a year without someone wanting to make it so.
Every time we hear Jorge Lobos (Board "Chair"), or Jesus Armendariz, Leonard Black, or Irma Jimenez de Prieto (all Board members) ask "is there enough money to last until January 2010", we wonder do they really care about what happens after January? So we are left to speculate about what more terrible things they have planned for the community.
So there we were, looking at the video of the last Board meeting to which we were not invited, and there was a member of the Yakama Nation presenting a letter in which he expresses his concern about the same issues we all feel: the abandonment of mission, the lack of respect for elders, and the unfair treatment of NCEC/KDNA employees. He presented his letter, and the Board responded as usual. With the standard arrogant shrug.
What Glen Pinkham talks about in his letter is serious business, and could have serious consequences for the future of KDNA. Dismissing Pinkham and his concerns almost certainly puts the broadcasting future of KDNA at risk. But Board Chair Lobos continues to strut as if he must listen to no one, as if he is secure in some plan. In a plan he cannot articulate.
Should KDNA loose its transmitter site on Ahtanum Ridge, KDNA will have to relocate its antenna to another site. It is a certainty that they will not be able to find a new site from which KDNA's signal will reach into both the Upper and Lower Yakima Valley.
Is silencing KDNA the plan? We have to wonder.
Here is Glen Pinkham's letter
November 7, 2009 - Video from November 3rd protest
See the community demand Maria Fernandez's resignation. See Fernandez warn the community to get out because she has called the police. See the Sheriff say "it looks pretty quiet here." See Ninfa video tape the protestors for her scrapbook.
November 4, 2009 - Corporation of Public Broadcasting audits KDNA
If the regime of “Executive Director” Maria Fernandez and her rubber stamping board of directors has done nothing productive in the last 17 months, and they haven’t, she has united the community in one thing: demanding her resignation. If this was Iraq, they would be throwing shoes at her. But in Granger a diverse community of Native Americans, Chicanos, Mexican Americans, Latinos, African Americans, and Anglos came together peacefully and respectfully on November 3rd to protest her mismanagement of KDNA, and request an opportunity to present their case to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The following is a report we have received from the Yakima valley.
Maria Fernandez - The Community demands your resignation!
(In foreground is Gary Anderson, past Mayor of Granger, and in the hallway, Robert Thomas)
Fernandez, of course, called the police, claiming there was a riot. The Granger Chief of Police arrived and informed Fernandez that there was nothing illegal taking place, and that these community members have a legal right to be in their community center. Fernandez then called the Sheriff and claimed that the Chief of Police was not doing his job. The Sheriff came to Granger and had to explain that the Chief of Police is in charge of the city’s law enforcement and that there was nothing illegal about what the community was doing.
Like some hybrid of a turtle and an ostrich, Fernandez then locked the doors to KDNA and reception area, pulled the shades, and turned off the lights on the community. As this was a Tuesday during regular business hours, a couple of people not involved in the demonstration came to the NCEC reception office only to find the doors locked.
According to Fernandez, the auditor from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Office of the Inspector General “did not want to meet with community members.” This is difficult to believe as he had come all the way from Washington DC to conduct the audit as a result of the many letters of complaint that CPB has received from these same community members.
See October 2009 posts
