ONA Weekly #250

Last call for ONA19 pitches

The deadline to pitch sessions for ONA19 is March 21, 11:59 p.m. EDT. Submit your best ideas for interactive workshops, bold conversations and under-the-hood sessions to help shape the program for this year’s conference. We are looking for ideas that are specific and solutions-oriented and provide resources for the digital journalism community. You can pitch as many ideas as you like.

Your questions on legal affairs and ethics

ONA’s Legal Affairs, News Ethics and Standards Committee formulates ONA’s position on legal and ethical issues that affect digital journalists. Activities include evaluating proposed legislation and working with partners to research and share ethical best practices related to digital news and emerging technology. We look forward to introducing a monthly feature in this newsletter to share the committee’s work and expertise. As always, we welcome your input: What topics, questions or resources around legal affairs would be most relevant to you? Reply to this email to let us know.

Join the ONA19 audio team

Contribute your skills as a volunteer on the ONA19 audio team, and receive a complimentary badge to attend the conference. The audio team produces the ONA on Air podcast, showcasing important conversations and attendees’ experience at the conference. The team also records conference sessions, which become an important resource for the broader ONA community. Apply now!

From the archives: Banish “if only”

We are sharing resources from the ONA archives throughout 2019, as we celebrate 20 years of inspiring innovation in journalism.

ONA16 Student Newsroom member Cara Lombardo — now a reporter at The Wall Street Journal — spoke with The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Greg Borowski about his best advice for the digital news industry. “Take ‘if only’ out of the newsroom conversation when it comes to using new platforms,” he said. “If no one has the skill, have someone learn.” Instead, he encourages newsrooms to replace “if only” with “What would it take?” That advice resonates more loudly each year as digital journalists continue to create and adopt new ways of delivering information to communities.

Upcoming events

• March 20, ONA DC: Let’s Talk About Media Unionization in 2019
• March 21, ONA St. Louis: Newsroom Tour at St. Louis Public Radio and Panel Discussion on Podcasting
• March 29, ONA Phoenix: Meet and Greet Mixer New!
• April 1, ONA South Florida: Evening Salon with the Knight Foundation Journalism Team
• April 3, ONA Italia: Storie Locali e Smartphone – Local Stories and Smartphones at IJF19
• April 11–12, ONA Rocky Mountain: Denver NewsTrain Workshop New! 
• April 25, ONA Cincinnati: Learn What Makes Deadspin Special
• April 26, ONA PDX: Networked News, Racial Divides

Jobs for journalists

ONA’s Career Center is an excellent resource for jobs in digital journalism. Recent postings include:

• Digital Marketer and Audience Growth Specialist, Capital & Main
• Assistant Business Editor, The Seattle Times
• Assistant Professor/Director of Public Affairs Reporting, University of Illinois Springfield
• Digital Director, WMTV NBC15 in Madison, Wis.
• Audience Voices Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

On our radar

• The only metric of success that really matters is the one we ignore, Quartz
• What ethnography can teach us about better reporting, Mandy Jenkins for JSK Fellowships
• How to prepare your newsroom for the 2020 census, KPCC
• The rise of unions in digital media, Tricky
• How the Seattle Times used a breaking news approach on enterprise reporting, Better News