#ONA11

[doristruong]

Thanks to the Online News Association for inviting me to be part of a session with Kat Aaron of the Investigative Reporting Workshop and Joe Torres of Free Press. (Click the link above to watch us on video.)

[seanblanda]

Making it Work With a Small Staff + other ONA notes

It was 30-minutes before our ONA panel, and everyone wanted to be our best friend.

"I'm going wherever you're going," said one women stopping mid-conversation.

"Where's the party?" yelled one of the guys manning the sponsor tables in the hall way.

As much I'd like to say it was because they saw our handsome faces in the conference program, it was likely more about the three 12-packs of Harpoon IPA we were carrying through the halls on the way to our panel.

I'm often critical of conference panels. Talks on theory don't do much for me. I love actual examples, systems, numbers and next steps. And beer.

Which is why I was excited to speak at the Online News Association's annual conference in Boston last weekend. I partnered with my Omaha-based counterpart Danny Schreiber of Silicon Prarie News for "Making it Work With a Small Staff" a panel about a growing sector of the media ecosystem: bootstrapped journalism startups with less than 10 employees.

We took great pains to include lots of actionable advice from the point of two people who are in the trenches. Our panel even got a bit meta as it was originally supposed to be a four-person panel. So we had to, um, make it work with a small staff. We did this by shifting our original structure of the panel and by creating a friendly environment by handing out a few beers before we began our talk.

We discussed how Technically Philly and Silicon Prarie News make money, how we sell sponsorships, who we plan on hiring next and how we keep tabs on our growing communities. We goes lots of questions on our events business and many people remarked on how our editorial advice sounded familiar.

We gave out a handout that I've included below that includes links to the actual sponsorship materials, invoices and other raw materials that we use at Technically Philly. The full video:

Excepts from the handout:

Business takeaways:

Establish a workflow for invoices.

Have goals. Do you want to bring on your founders full-time? Hire three writers? Launch four sites?

When selling, always have reference material. Examples: a sponsorship one pager for a large event. For a small event.

“How can we get involved?” = “We want to buy something from you.”

Focus your efforts on products and services that yield maximum return per hour invested. Spending an hour selling a $50 advertisement? Not efficient.

Many online publishers are constantly approached by vendors. Avoid them.

Editorial takeaways:

Schedule tweets/Facebok posts with CoTweet or Hootsuite.

Keep a strict editorial calendar with weekly features and departments to ensure there site never looks stale. The simpler the better (i.e. a Q and A, link roundup, a weekly picture, unedited video content).

Alerts, RSS and Google Reader are your friend. Have Google News, Crunchbase & Twitter mention alerts for all companies, places and people that you cover.

Never send three reporters to an event when one will do. Let the community fill coverage gaps if needed.

If you can write something in bullet points, write it in bullet points. Not every story is a narrative.

Freelancers can be a great way to relieve pressure on your staff or a huge waste of time and resources. Choose your freelancers with care and provide them with tools to succeed.

Have an ethics policy and keep it public. Refer to this when faced with controversy.

Be absolutely ruthless with your time. Don’t meet in person when a phone call will do. Don’t call when email will do.

If you do meet with someone, send an agenda containing the topics you want to talk about. This helps the other party prepare for the conversation and keeps you on topic.

Your reporters may also sell ads. Disclose this. For most outside of the journalism community, this is enough. Example of disclosure.

Other ONA notes:

Somehow, my bio in the program got replaced with Joshua Benton's from Neiman Lab. I'll take it.

Advice for future panel speakers: be over-prepared.

Also, spend lots of time with your fellow panelists and determine points of disagreement. This leads to a better conversation.

Many thanks to Andrew Pergam for helping us organize our session.

Much of ONA is dedicated to digital departments within a larger news organization. I found myself wanting more for the indy news site.

Conference attendees want new services, tips and tricks that they can write down and immediately implement when they return to work.

Before ONA11, Danny had never heard of ONA. The group should do more to reach out to these independent and profitable news sites.

[onaissues]

Happy Holidays from ONA!

Here is a long lost mix of newsy songs suggested by our friends in honor of ONA11, this year's ONA conference in Boston. Jam out to a mix of digital journalism references and Boston bands on Spotify. 

Photo by cogdogblog via Flickr. 

[onauncon2011]

Jim used stickers and matchboxes to drum up votes for his session on "smart ways to use dumb phones." It worked!

[prgumbo]

"The most successful people tend to be those with the most failures,"

Dr. Simonton, Author, Genius 101 - quoted in Wall Street Journal 9/27 article "Better Ideas through Failure"

[sarahdayowen]

ONA reflections: It's about community

In "Atlas Shrugged," the driving forces behind the world recede from society. But they build an Atlantis-like community where they strengthen each other for a short amount of time to keep going.

Ayn Rand was no community builder. But from that philosophy to others that value community as a sustaining force (religions, even), community strengthens. It's community and collaboration that will help the journalism motor running.

At the Online News Association conference, it was never as clear to me that working with each other is important to achieve the mission of journalism.

Don't get me wrong -- the sessions shared invaluable tips and resources to take back, and sharing that information alone benefits journalism. But collaborating goes beyond just the knowledge shared in structured sessions.

I joined the #wjchat team about a year ago (I should keep better track of these things) after a months-long search for resources and ways I could teach myself things I needed to learn as a social media editor at my last news org.

I had approached different professional organizations I had been a part of and asked people inside and outside of my company if there were groups, or maybe a listserv. Nothing. Then I started chiming in on Wednesday nights for #wjchat and answered a call for more volunteer moderators.

It's the journalism community I owe a lot of my professional development (and my current job, which I saw on Twitter after following my now-boss after a #wjchat).

At ONA, I got to have conversations with journalists whose work I've admired and pick their brains on specific problems and goals. It's a level you just can't get to over 140 characters and a webinar.

I also got to meet some of the team #wjchat IRL, people I've talked to more than once a week for a year.

(Team #wjchat at ONA: Robert Hernandez (@webjournalist), Kim Bui (@KimBui), Jen Reeves (@jenleereeves) and me)

Our session  is storify'ed by Benet Wilson here. 

I noticed some of the problems in newsrooms come from lack of communication and could be solved by integration of digital resources (people and tools). This is the core community to bring things back to.

But also think about the journalism community and horizontal loyalty.

From the "Show Your Work" movement promoting open source work to the nature of the "Guerilla Unconference", my very first ONA conference showed me what it's all about. It's about community.

Other things I learned:

When you see your professional heroes, go talk to them. Even if you're not sure you have anything to say. You'll be glad you did.

Watch the buzz on Twitter. You'll find out what people are doing. This is how I ended up going on a run with a bunch of journalists whose work I admire.

Invite yourself along. Everyone is a new kid at the conference at some point.

Prepare in advance: bring plenty of cards and get plenty of sleep the week before.

Stay at the host hotel and get roommates. It's not awkward, it's awesome.

Get a beer, get a meal, get ice cream. Be social outside the conference. It's not like you have to talk shop the whole time. Most journalists are fun.

Take notes on the plane. Everything fades fast and will fall out of your head when you get back to the daily grind, so write some applicable ideas while you're still on the conference high.

Don't be a snob. Someone who is where you want to be in 10 years probably talked to you, so make time for everyone, not just the people with the bigger titles. There's a lot of talent at these things.

--and see you next year, ONA.

[jfbannister]

Hello, There

A little truth, here. I started this as a way to follow The Washington Post's Innovations blog. 

After attending ONA11, however, I realized, "Hey, this could be useful for every day use, too."

Back to full disclosure; I created a WordPress blog, and have been writing in it as often as possible and blasting it out via Twitter. Again, after attending ONA11, I came away with the realization that Tumblr acts as both a blogging medium and a social media medium. What does that mean? Well, I don't necessarily have to blast this out through Twitter. My followers on Tumblr can reblog, add a comment, or blast it through their own social media medium to have others reply. BRILLIANT!

I would like to thank Mark Coatney of Tumblr and Phoebe from Yahoo! for putting together the "Unconference" session "We've got a Tumblr. Now what?" It was very informative and, like everything else from ONA11, I came away thinking, "That was incredible."

[donnahowell-blog]

Back to LAX from Boston and the Online News Association conference ONA11.

[lifeandcode]

On the hunt for the next project

After launching Journalism Conference Bingo at ONA11,  I'm on the hunt for my next development project -- I have to find an idea that I love, at a difficulty level that will challenge me (yet isn't impossible).  

It'll come.  My ideas are like the subway: there'll be another one along in five minutes.  

[anexcellentspaceman-blog-blog]

More crochet graffiti on Newton, walking to dinner after #ona11. NYT (and others) have wriiten about the phenomenon (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/fashion/creating-graffiti-with-yarn.html) of yarn bombing. So happy-making. I saw a crocheted tricycle in Soho when I was in NYC for #BlogWorld. (Taken with Instagram at Boston)

[zfrankqiu-blog]

First Tumblr post

Trying all different things listening to Phoebe Doris? 

[onaissues]

Gene Weingarten criticizes ONA11, Ben Huh. WaPo asks: Was he right?

In this week's column Gene Weingarten criticizes ONA's annual conference (ONA11) held last month in Boston, asserting that the main message of the conference was around attracting reader eyeballs, ridiculing journalists' focus on branding, and chastising the selection of Ben Huh as a keynote. 

ONA's executive director, Jane McDonnell responded in the comments by inviting Weingarten to a first-hand view of the organization with an offer of membership and an extension to be our guest at ONA12 scheduled for Sept 20-22 in San Francisco. She also provided clarification that there were, in fact, 4 keynote speakers while defending the choice of Ben Huh with the following:

Ben Huh was actually our Friday night networking speaker, providing some comic relief, yes, but also giving the crowd some painless lessons on how to build sites that actually make money -- no LOLcats in sight.  

Another Post columnist, Alexandra Petri weighed in shortly after saying that Weingarten was wrong.

As did Ben Huh the next day with these important points:

For decades, newspapers have used their power to charge inflated advertising rates, fill the paper with commodity wire articles, and pretend to act in the best interest of the community while ignoring their needs. With that, the vibrance and competitiveness of journalism withered on the vine. “Objectivity” became the religion, not serving the readers. Change was bad, and the status quo filled the coffers.

Until the Internet came along.

When any company loses their competitive edge, they are wiped from the planet by those who better understand and better fit the needs of their customers. When an entire industry loses its competitive edge, cantankerous old fuds complain about the good old days using column inches.

The Atlantic Wire tosses the Weingarten vs. Huh debate around in SPATWATCH, touting Huh as the winner. While Jim Romenesko asks over at Poynter if Weingarten is resisting necessary, healthful change in journalism. 

And the Washington Post editors have asked readers, Gene Weingarten on ONA: Did he get it wrong?

Now it's our turn. Where do you stand in this debate? Give us your thoughts in comments/reblogs or submit your own response for publication on ONA Issues here.

[onauncon2011]

Finishing as a runner-up in the official voting didn't deter Heather Billings and Michelle Minkoff: They held their session on Django regardless.

[robbole]

2,000 Head are Better than One: Crowdsourcing Panel at ONA 2011

Panelists: Matt Wells, US-based blog editor for theGuardian & Derrik Ashong, al Jazeera "The Stream" host

How is crowd-sourcing incorporated in the editorial conference?

Matt - today's editorial conference is very "outward-looking", not only what are the top stories of the day and are we deployed/what angles, but includes what our users know, what they can do to help us.

Example for theGuardian: Digging through Sarah Palin's 24,000 Alaska Page of Emails

- Sent a journalist to Alaska with a Scanner, who literally scanned in all of these pages

- Utilized the simple tool to task the audience that they used with the PM information: needed to be simple + fun

- Created a dedicated web work page that brings up an email; user reads and then rates the email (significant? funny?) and how important (not interesting? Palingate!?)

- This creates a tag of the scanned page

- Need to have a result or reward to the user, which in this case visualizations of #documents scanned, read, and some visualization of the ratings.

- Back-end reporting tool that sorted and showed the documents that were significant, funny, important, etc as rated by the users

Live Blog at theGuardian as a engagement tool

- Live coverage is a big part of their position in the market and with the audience; started with sports matches + TV shows

- now doing news event live blogs to track both breaking news and ongoing enterprise type journalism, such as Arab Spring/Middle East live blog

- daily entries at a minimum, but includes social media feed, feed of who they are following, Google reader of "picks of the day" reads + even phone-in of live accounts (Alive In...opportunity)

- they quickly realized that they needed a community coordinator to work with the commentors, contributors.  Anything above 100 was too much for the live blog editor to manage the community.  They are not reporters or comment deleters, "half-way between journalism and moderation".  Their job is to read the comments and pick out the best ones to pass onto the journalists, but also respond to questions or thoughts.

Type of Crowdsourcing at theGuardian

- tasking the audience (Palin emails)

- engaging & soliciting information to deepen the journalism (Live Blog)

- sharing their experiences (9/11 coverage): need to be very specific in "the ask"

Must Have Tools

- Developers in the newsroom!!!

Derrick Ashong

What happens in producing the Stream?

- morning editorial meeting to see what people are interested in and what they want to watch;

- pre and post editorial: constantly monitoring social media feeds for interesting feeds, as well as catching pitches from the audience.  They respond back-and-forth to solicit more information, videos, etc.

- in the show, there is a community management job in the control room to send content to the digital producer on the set; digital producer will slot content into the conversation as they see fit

How do you think about the audience?

- we want them actively in the editorial process; we want to help audience raise their level of sophistication about our process so they could really participate.

- they use Storify, and provide the same access level to storify to submit content and then use Skype to interview these "storytellers"

What are the feedback loops for theStream?

- there is a really active Twitter stream; for example in Korea the program is not live, but they send in lots of information; they cover this type of story (not-live) in a "feedback" segement of what people are talking about online.  If that continues the feedback from the audience they can elevate into a story.  1) Tweet + Tweet = 2) Feedback Segment = 3) Storify = 4) Full Program or Segment

How do you cultivate the audience?

- use Google+ to recruit and interact with a "core corps" that participate in the open editorial meetings.

Audience: How do you ensure the audience sees crowd-sourcing as legit?

- need to make clear that the organization needs the audience help, that they cannot do the news/project without their help

- need to make sure that you are clearly adding to the journalism, not replacing.

- we don't read tweets to be cute, we read tweets when there is an honest question from the audience; we have staff that are coming social media, but are deeply digital journalists that are constantly in communication with the audience during the week.

Audience: do you get super-users?

- yes on all panelists, but the key is that you are actively listening and conversing

Audience: how to do this in a small newroom ?

- keep it simple

- use storify/storyful to aggregate social media content

- Cover it Live

- AudioBoo

- Google Docs, Google Forms (easy input), Excel spreadsheet, Google Fusion Tables

Audience: how do you handle source verification issues for web sources?

- luxury of time is great, but scarce to source the story; interviewing the source for context and their information

And that is all!

[prgumbo]

ONA unconf So you have a tumblr now what?

[sarahdayowen]

ONA recap: Link resource list

Lots of slides and digital handouts from the 2011 Online News Association Conference. Here are SOME of them. If you have others, please reply to me on Twitter @SarahDayOwen and I'll try to add!

Of course we should start with the video from #screen2 mass rick roll:

Now -- LINKS:

Entrepreneurial Journalism links (also I storify'ed here) (#math)

MIT affective computing lab website | Forbes Interative: Analyze your Smile (#affective)

ADDED: Covering Elections page from @A_L

#TwitterTools from @EricaAmerica

Once Upon a Datum: Telling Visual Stories slides | Links

#BrandCPR (The brand is dead; long live the brand! session) slides

B.S. Detection for Journalists

@webbmedia/Amy Webb's Top 10 Tech Trends

Making it work with a small staff

Cooking up tasty apps

#screen2 demo

Google News <standout> blog post

YouTube for media | YouTube Moderator |  Trends Dashboard (#youtube)

SMO is the new SEO:@petersmeg's tools | @kimbui's tools

Facebook and Journalists

Fusion Tables Legend | Get lat/long of point | Fusion Tables Layer Builder

Google Maps for Journalists (thanks for the link, @gteresa!)