Arlington Independent Media now has new board of directors and the outlines of a battle plan to bring itself back from the brink of extinction.
“We’re not giving up the ghost,” the organization’s outgoing secretary, Claire Seaton, said at the end of AIM’s annual membership meeting, held Sunday (Oct. 27).
“Here we are,” she had said to those assembled at the meeting’s start two hours earlier, “to figure out how to move forward.”
The public-access organization’s problems began to attract public attention in mid-2023. They accelerated through the end of the year and resulted in mass layoffs and the effective suspension of operations in early 2024.
Headwinds facing the non-profit community-media organization remain significant: Programming has been off the air in all formats since springtime, there is no remaining paid staff, it has about $2,500 in the bank but $130,000 in outstanding liabilities, and is behind on payments to the county government for its modest office/studio space.
“Things are not in great shape,” acknowledged Katarina Skladony, who was tapped as treasurer three months ago.
Improvement “is not going to happen overnight,” she said, but “there is a will and enthusiasm” to right the ship.
Looming on the near horizon is the expected release of an audit conducted at the insistence of the Arlington County Board. The auditors’ mission is to account for $2 million in public funds and revenue from cable operators provided to the organization between January 2022 and March 2024, when operations collapsed.
The audit could lay bare a host of past operational and leadership deficiencies at AIM, but also could enable a fresh start for its new leaders.
The audit is “basically ready,” said County Board member Takis Karantonis, who has served as a conduit between AIM and the county government for several years. After it is shared with county leaders and the new AIM board, which will have time to respond, it will be made public, he said.
The county government has been a prime funder of AIM operations, but turned off the spigot nearly a year ago. Board members approved $140,000 in one-time funding for the organization in the county’s fiscal 2025 budget, but conditioned its eventual release on a structural rebuilding.
The entire episode has been “traumatic for everybody involved,” Karantonis said. At several points in the meeting, he expressed disappointment that efforts to get back on the airwaves hadn’t moved at a faster clip.
Whether the organization will survive is a question Karantonis hopes is answered affirmatively.
“If there is a moment to make the case for a local independent media, this is it,” he said.
Before operations were curtailed in the spring, AIM created and distributed both video and audio programming across a number of platforms, and provided a host of training programs.
Immediate goals on the to-do list are three-fold, according to Jennifer Hemstra, a board member:
- Resume radio programming, first through online streaming and, when feasible, via WERA-FM, the organization’s low-power radio station.
- Rebuild the organization’s committee structure and let committee members take the lead on operations, fundraising and other matters.
- Staff up with part-time volunteers filling vital roles, from executive director on down.
Resumption of video/television programming and consideration of hiring paid staff are on the horizon, but not immediately, Hemstra said.
At the Oct. 27 event, six members were elected to what eventually will be an 11-member reconstituted board of directors. Executive officers will be elected by the directors at a future meeting.
Once housed in a sizable facility in Clarendon, AIM now occupies a considerably reduced footprint in a building on S. Four Mile Run Drive in Green Valley that it shares with Arlington County’s cultural affairs offices. Before the organization can resume transmitting programming online from the site, it will need to be looped into the government’s technology network, something Karantonis says he is trying to facilitate.
The organization has until next March to resume over-the-airwaves operation of WERA-FM. If it misses the deadline, the radio license could be revoked by federal regulators.
Treasurer Skladony said that once the audit is presented to the new AIM board, it will “help us strategize on how to move forward.”
“Hopefully there is no more bad news,” she said.
