#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]

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]

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

[onaissues]

Benét J. Wilson has a great list of the top 10 things she learned at ONA11, with lots of links.

"Next year’s convention is in my home town of San Francisco.  I hope to see even more journalists of color — especially NABJ members — at next year’s event.  And if you haven’t joined ONA yet, click here; it’s worth every cent of the $75 a year or $150 for three-year fee."

[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"

[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.

[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.