STEVE MCCLURE Nominated by: Dennis Normile Seconded by: John Boyd

Candidate for 2nd Vice President

Steve McClure

I imagine that many of you reading this are wondering: "What on earth is McClure thinking of, running for 2nd VP? Why, that's a responsible position - the Club's 2nd VP oversees human-resources issues. As a journalist covering the music biz, McClure may know a thing or two about jam sessions, but collective-bargaining sessions …?"

Let me do my best to assuage your doubts, as I ask for your vote in my bid to be elected and serve you as the Club's second vice president in the coming year. I am the first to admit that I am relatively inexperienced when it comes to the finer points of labor and human-resources matters (notwithstanding the year I served as Father of the Chapel [shop steward] in the National Union of Journalists local while working as a reporter for the Windsor, Slough, Eton and Ascot Express in the UK in the mid-'80s).

I believe it is the 2nd VP's job not to micro-manage human-resources matters, but rather to assemble a team of qualified professionals with experience in that field on the HR Committee , who along with the Club's management will work together to make sure employees are treated in a fair and dignified manner, while also safeguarding the interests of the Club.

Cooperation, not confrontation, is my motto. I believe - forgive me if I sound na?ve - that people can and should sit down and discuss in good faith matters of mutual concern about which they may not necessarily agree. Ideological agendas and petty personal politics do not interest me.

The traditional role of the journalist is to speak truth to power, rather than to wield it (although information itself can be a form of power). In our collective role as employers at the Club, we journalists thus find ourselves in something of an anomalous situation. Our natural tendency is to side with the underdog, which in labor-management negotiations usually means the employees.

However, as 2nd VP and thus HR Committee chair, my priority will be to represent and protect the interests of the Club, which exists to serve the interests of its members and whose staff are employed to help run the Club (pardon me for belaboring the obvious). The key issue here is one of governance; the FCCJ is not an anarcho-syndicalist collective. This point became very clear to me when I served on the Board in 2008-09 at a time when there was dissension among some members of the staff concerning the then-GM. I felt that they had chosen the wrong way to express their grievances and were usurping the membership's basic prerogative of governance. I put that down to a lack of communication, for which both sides were to blame.

Instead of treading on each other's toes like this and working at cross-purposes, the staff, management and we as members need to work together as stakeholders in the Club to build a positive atmosphere in which each party's interests are respected and represented. And I believe that I can help create and foster that kind of climate, building on my experience in serving as a director-at-large on two previous Boards and for the past three months on the current Board. My other Club activities, by the way, include my ongoing copy-editing duties at Number 1 Shimbun (including a stint as Managing Editor in 2008-09) and membership of the Entertainment Committee.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm a native of Vancouver, Canada, and have lived in Tokyo since 1985. In 1998 I published Nippon Pop, the first book in English on Japanese pop music, and in 2005 I helped establish nippop.com, the Internet's leading source of information about Japanese music. Until 2008, I was Billboard magazine's Asia Bureau Chief. In May 2009 I launched McClure's Asia Music News (www.mccluremusic.com), an e-mail newsletter and website covering the Japanese and Asian music industries.

I look forward to working with the other members of the new Board to help the Club become a more relevant, inclusive and open organization that gives its members real value. And I believe the Board should develop better lines of communication with all members of the Club.

I humbly ask for your support.