Thursday, January 3, 2013 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Dear UNITY Alliance Partner Members,

Over the weekend, UNITY board members met online to discuss the UNITY Name Task Force’s process, and as a result, a tweak has been made to the ballot in which members will be voting on a new name for UNITY.

We ask for patience and understanding. And in particular, we apologize to AAJA members. Some AAJA members have already cast their votes and will be asked to do so again on this new ballot, which will be made available to members by their associations on Wednesday.

The new ballot will contain three choices; although Nos. 1 and 2 remain the same, No. 3 was tweaked:

1. UNITY: Journalists of Color

2. UNITY: Journalists of Color & Diversity

3. UNITY: Journalists for Diversity

The first two names on the ballot were the most suggested during the month-long suggestion phase, when the public was asked to submit ideas via email to UNITYname@gmail.com. The third name was also one of the suggestions submitted, although it was not one of the top three.

Members will vote through their alliance associations. Members will have 10 days to vote, ending 11:59 p.m. EST Friday, Dec. 14. No write-ins will be considered.

After the votes are counted, each association will submit the full results disclosing how many votes each name received to UNITY’s Interim Executive Director Walt Swantson. She will inform the Task Force, which will convene to discuss the results and prepare a recommendation to UNITY’s board members. Ballots will then be prepared for UNITY board members to vote. (UNITY board members are expected to vote how their organizations voted and respect the wishes of their members.)

Again, thank you for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience. We look forward to announcing the results before the end of the year.

Thank you to those of you who have helped us gather suggestions for UNITY’s name.

At the request of George Kiriyama and those who’ve been most affected by Hurricane Sandy, we’re pushing back the deadline to receive suggestions to our UNITYname@gmail.com inbox to Thursday, November 15th.

Q&A about the search for UNITY’s new name:

In response to questions from members about how UNITY will choose its new name, we have compiled the following:

1. Why is UNITY looking for a new name?

The UNITY board voted on Oct. 7 to create a UNITY Name Task Force to respond to our members’ concerns about how our previous name, “UNITY Journalists of Color,” was changed without their input at our April Board meeting. The board unanimously voted to examine our name in an effort to find something that better reflected our expanded mission statement, set the number of members on the task force (and agreed to include a member of NABJ), but left it up to the task force to determine how to get input from members on the name.

Dear members of AAJA, NAHJ, NAJA and NLGJA,

The UNITY Journalists Board of Directors agreed last week to create a UNITY Name Task Force to find a name that both reflects our new mission statement and includes input from our alliance members.

As part of this process, we invite you to submit your suggestions for UNITY’s name to the email account UNITYname@gmail.com.

We will accept nominations to this account through Thursday, November 15th.

Janet Cho has been appointed to lead a task force that will gather all the suggestions and select five finalists.

These will then be put up for a vote among the members of AAJA, NAHJ, NAJA and NLGJA.