ONA Issues

New! ONA members now receive priority attention from First Amendment Coalition (FAC) lawyers, thanks to a partnership between ONA and FAC. The next time you have a question about your legal rights as a journalist, check out FAC’s legal consultation service, the Legal Hotline, free of charge.

ONA and FAC are collaborating to make the Legal Hotline service available on a priority basis for ONA members to give journalists expert guidance and support in holding government accountable.

The Legal Hotline handles questions about freedom of speech, access to government records, attending court proceedings or meetings of government agencies and many more matters involving journalists and their legal tools and rights.

Learn more: ONA Members, Have a Question About Your Legal Rights? | Online News Association

(Source: journalists.org)

ONA16 offers more for broadcasters and lots of ways to learn about VR – Poynter

The Online News Association announced on Thursday the first sessions on the schedule of its annual conference. This year’s conference, held Sept. 15 to 17 in Denver, includes offerings for broadcasters, sessions on virtual reality and practical lessons for developing new skills.

“We consistently receive feedback that the most valuable sessions at ONA conferences have a firm takeaways: hands on trainings or practical tips our community can immediately implement as they return to their newsrooms,” Trevor Knoblich, ONA’s digital director, said in an email. “We’re really focused on including those types of sessions at ONA16 and making it clear what people will walk away with.”

(Source: poynter.org)

The Online News Association is hiring a Community Manager! Very awesome opportunity to work with local journalists doing great work.  

(Source: journalists.org)

How One Association Tackled a Conference Diversity Problem: Associations Now

Tech conferences have taken their share of hard knocks for failing to reflect and promote industry diversity. Among them is the annual meeting hosted by the Online News Association, which focuses on the convergence of technology and journalism.

But ONA’s 2015 conference… looks different. It has a more diverse lineup of presenters than in past years: 52 percent are women, and 36 percent are people of color. But the diversity push goes beyond racial and gender lines—25 percent of the speakers hail from local news organizations, and 8 percent come from other countries.

ONA Executive Director Jane McDonnell and Deputy Director Irving Washington, CAE, acknowledge that the association took some heat over a lack of diversity at past conferences.

“As ONA struggled to help journalists deal with cataclysmic changes over the past 10 years, diversity slipped out of focus,” McDonnell and Washington wrote in a blog post. “That loss is difficult to make up, but it’s nowhere near as daunting as annual discouraging data suggests. The really hard part? Starting.”

(Source: associationsnow.com)

Three ways news outlets are making money - Columbia Journalism Review

AMONG ALL OF the seminars being tweeted about last Friday at the Online News Association Conference, there was one that rose to the top. Festooned with the hashtag #newsrevenue, it was a panel on revenue and ethics, called The Revenue Review: Memberships, Advertising, and Events, and attendees were clearly loving it:

“#newsrevenue #ona15. One of the meatiest sessions so far,” tweeted Jan Schaffer, founder of J-Lab at the American University School of Communication. Diana Heitz, a news platform editor at CNN, chimed in with a nod to the moderator, @kairyssdal, saying “#newsrevenue might be most important session at#ONA15. I get it. I get it.”

And then this from Katie Hawkins-Gaar, a faculty member at Poynter: “The transparency in this #newsrevenuepanel is so refreshing. Everyone is furiously taking notes. Bravo to the panelists. #ONA15”

The panelists who were giving their audience such a thrill were three executives from digital native newsrooms: Mary Brown, publisher of Voice of San Diego, Evan Smith, editor in chief of Texas Tribune, and Joy Robins, SVP of Global Revenue and Strategy for Quartz. They were on a stage at ONA because they were doing what nearly every media organization, large and small, is pulling their hair to do: They were making money on the news.

(Source: cjr.org)

Deadline extended! 

You’ve got an extra week to send the Online News Association your best digital journalism to be recognized in the 2015 Online Journalism Awards.

Now that you have more time, here is what you need to know to enter:

• Ten of the 37 awards come with $60,000 in prize money, courtesy of John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Gannett Foundation and The University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.
  
• Read Executive Director Jane McDonnell’s tips on what makes a great entry and the rules and eligibility carefully.
  
• Check out the descriptions of the 2015 categories, which include the new Sports Category and a Pro-Am grouping to our Student Category.
  

The winners will be announced at the 2015 Online News Association Conference and Awards (ONA15), Sept. 24-26 in Los Angeles. 

Photo: npr‘s Brian Boyer shows off the 2014 Online Journalism Award for Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt. 

Have an idea to share with digital journalists? Submit it to the ONA15 Suggestion Box! 

Each year, we bring together journalists, technologists, academics and others passionate about the news to share the most exciting trends in digital journalism. This year, we’ll be in Los Angeles, Sept. 24-26. 

We’re looking for pitches that are inspiring, instructional or both.  Send us your ideas by April 10. 

(Source: ona15.journalists.org)

We’re so excited to be headed back to the West Coast for ONA15! Join us for three days of journalism, tech and innovation in LA, Sept. 24-26.

We’ve got a great team helping us create the conference. Our co-chairs, who will help guide the theme and vision for the conference, include Megan Garvey, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times, David Smydra, Manager of News Partnerships at Google, and Robert Hernandez, our Board Liaison and Associate Professor of Professional Practice at USC Annenberg. Our program committee, led by INN’s Luis Gomez and The Los Angeles Times’ Julie Westfall, is already in place and will help sort through the great ideas from our community to craft the session topics.

We’ll begin accepting session ideas at the end of February. In advance, you can help us shape the program by weighing in on what issues and trends are emerging in your newsrooms.