CIRA Board Election: Who I'm voting for & why

Voting just started today in the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) board election. I currently plan to vote for these candidates:

Members' Slate:
- Frank Michlick

Nomination Committee Slate:
- Lee Dale
- Rowena Liang
- my third choice not decided yet

All candidates' info is linked from this CIRA page. Voting ends next Thursday (Sept 29) at noon Pacific time. I will update this post if I change my choices. If you're a CIRA member, you should receive an email from CIRA today with a link to their voting page.

As when I posted on last year's election: "My research is not very deep, but there seems to be a lack of candidate assessments available online, so I'm trying to help fill that gap."

This year, my voting is based mainly on the online Campaign Forum, where some important issues were debated. I think accountability of the board to the membership and to the Canadian internet community is crucial, so I paid close attention to these two threads:

- CIRA as a Membership Based Organization

- Changing CIRA's Board Selection Process

I welcome your comments, advice, info etc!

CIRA Election Forum

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is holding its annual board election. In the election campaign's online forum, there's an interesting thread on CIRA as a Membership Based Organization. Yesterday I posted a comment there; I'm reposting it below (with better links) followed by some further thoughts. So although the election forum will be closed to comments after tomorrow noon (Eastern Time) when voting starts, we can continue discussing here.

How Canada Can Support Serious Journalism

Today I submitted this 3-page comment letter [updated version 2016-10-04] with a policy proposal to let Canadian voters allocate public funding to competing journalist teams. This would support more public interest journalism such as election coverage and watching out for corruption in government. I recommend testing it in municipal politics before implementing it nationally. Canada's federal government has commissioned a study and report on this topic from the Public Policy Forum.

Quote:

It's not that people don't understand the need for [public interest journalism]. We just need an incentive-compatible way to pay for it.

Relevant links:

• 2016-03-10 Does serious journalism have a future in Canada?
• 2016-06-21 Five things to know with Canada's news media industry under public policy review
• 2016-08-07 John Oliver (HBO) Last Week Tonight: Journalism
• 2016-08-08 Podcast interview: Should The Government Bail Out The News Business?
• 2016-09-01 Ottawa cuts newspaper ad spending amid worries about sector