About eight months ago, I did a series of blog posts critiquing some of the paid-membership, professional journalism organizations and of the top four, the Online News Association probably saw the harshest criticism. Since then, ONA has made some changes and I wanted to update some of my points.
(For the record, no one from ONA has acknowledged my blog critique except Amy Webb, who is planning the convention this year and asked for feedback/advice on the curriculum. But it appears that my words or something else has lit a fire under ONA and they’ve made several notable changes regaurding some of the issues I brought up.)
1 – Convention lineup improved
The conference organizers (Amy Webb, Tiffany Shackelford and I think Chrys Wu and probably 9382389 other people are behind the scenes helping too) may have prepared the best lineup ever at ONA. Many of the panels are high-utility and very applicable to actually getting things done and less about the panelist’s ego than in previous years. The topics also much closer to being cutting edge and more technologically focused than ever before — I never would have thought I’d see something about the Semantic Web at ONA! (Yay!)
I am slightly disappointed by the IRE organized pre-workshop on “Dynamic Websites for Newsrooms” not including DJango (instead only speaking to Ruby on Rails development), especially since I believe more news organizations actually use Django than Ruby… but it’s not a huge deal. The fact that Ruby is getting taught at an ONA conference is excellent.
2 – Board diversity encouraged more precisely
On Feb. 15, almost exactly one month after my post, ONA announced, “Starting this fall, with the election for the 2009 board, associate, academic and student members of the Online News Association now will be eligible to vote and run for ONA’s board of directors. … While we remain primarily focused on the needs of working journalists, we also recognize that the board should better reflect the membership as a whole. So we have modified the bylaws to provide for the election of up to three non-professional members to the board.”
They’ve followed through this summer in their board member nomination process by specifically calling out the precise diversity issues I pointed out (that the board is predominately older executives, largely white males at major publications high up on the totem pole). For nominations this year they specifically asked for:
It is the responsibility of the Nominating Committee to present a slate that reflects a diversity of interests in the make-up of the board. These interests include:
-Types of online medium represented on the board.
-Sizes of institutions represented by the individual member.
-Type of experience in digital media.
-Representation that reflects the diverse communities that journalism serves.
This is fantastic. (Yay!) Now hopefully some young, smart, diverse individuals were nominated (and still working after the bloodiest summers in the history of this profession).
3 – Representing the business better on larger issues
In March, two months after my critique, ONA publicly spoke out (and notified its members) about the tighter Major League Baseball restrictions and to the Dallas Mavericks for their new media policy. (Yay!)
This is fantastic and something I’d like to continue to see more of from ONA. Perhaps even an partnership with the Electronic Frontier Foundation? ONA has the power to bring major online and information issues to the forefront. Specifically, I’d really like to see them start speaking out and educating members about Net Neutrality and how if it goes away it could disastrously affect both journalism and online freedoms. There is no other journalism organization more perfectly positioned to spearhead this important issue. (Disclosure: Anyone that reads this blog knows I’m a huge proponent of protecting Net Neutrality. If you didn’t, now you do.)
4 – Releasing the conference audio
I’ve been critical about ONA capturing audio of the conferences then selling it back to members for $149 a CD, while many, MANY other conventions offer this stuff for free — even in video form and to the entire public, not just members! It’s a great form of free marketing for your organization!
Since my post, (on April 2, to be exact) ONA has turned over half a new leaf and is at least sharing this content with paid members — they’ve posted notes and audio files from the 2007 conference in the members area of the site! Free to everyone (especially since it’s now a year old) would have been cool but I’ll take this victory. (Yay!)
5- ONA expands its web presense
On July 28th, ONA announced they hired their first Web Editor, Sherry Skalko. (This wasn’t part of my critique but I believe it should have a positive impact on the organization and should be applauded.) Also this summer, Interactive Narratives 2.0 launched, which ONA helped support. (Triple yay!) I’m also intrigued by the grant they were awarded for ‘expanding member services‘ and what that actually means. We’ll see what happens.
It should also be noted that over the past couple months Acting Executive Director, Tom Regan, has also done an absolutely fantastic job covering for Lori Schwab (the former Executive Director who left ONA this summer).
So they definitely made a great deal of progress since my critique but I think also they took one step back recently:
1- Nickelin’ and dimin’.
This next convention is going to be an expensive one. The host hotel costs $259 a night at the ‘discounted’ rate and that’s going to turn away members who aren’t already into the ONA ‘class.’
I’m afraid this is going to continue a trend I noticed at last year’s convention, where there was quite a dearth of the Seth Gitners and the William Couches of the online news business. You know, the smart worker bees that win the awards, innovate regularly and keep readers coming back looking for more interesting online experiences? The ones who make all the ONA members in sport coats look good? They can’t afford to expense it and most papers aren’t helping them out anymore.
The point is, they shouldn’t have to rob two banks to get the money to attend an industry convention. It’s not just ONA either. UNITY had some crazy ‘discounted’ rates for their hotels. But I’m getting off topic now.
Other nicklin’ and dimin’ from ONA:
+ Charging for a job fair at the worst time in the history of journalism
They’re holding a job fair in conjunction with the convention. (Yay!) But charging outsiders (people not registered for the convention) $50 to enter the room, $25 for students. (Boo!) Change people, fine, but keep it under $25 unless you can gaurentee more than 25 employers that will be there and actually hiring. And charging the students? Thumbs down. It should be noted again that if you’ve paid for the convention you get in free — but you still have to register for the job fair. (Really? They can’t print off a list of the registrants and just look at that if they try and sneak into the job fair?) ONA is also charging anyone that’s hiring (all 3? maybe 4? publications) $250 to set up a table. (Boo!)
+ Dinner for $125 — you better be sure you’re taking home some glass
ONA has also announced they’re charging $125 per person to attend the awards banquet if you’re not registered for the conference. ONE HUNDRED TWENTY FIVE FREAKING DOLLARS. So if you’ve got a spouse or a proud mom that you want to impress with your shiny piece of ONA glass (assuming that you actually win) that’ll be $250. Are you a polygamist? You might want to get out your Centurion Card.
In retrospect though, I realized $125 may be the standard fee for eating dinner with ONA; I, unfortunately, attended an ONA dinner in Orlando a couple years ago and was surprised by a $125 per person check (which my multimedia producer ass couldn’t expense like some of the ‘other’ ONA fat cats).
But seriously — high fives all around and a little wag of the finger
Please don’t get me wrong. I definitely think ONA is making *VAST* improvements in 2008. But the cost issue concerns me as we are all feeling an immense financial crunch of an industry going through massive change during a recession or economic downturn or whatever we’re calling it now. I worry that new, non-uppercrust members, who may be intrigued by some of the leadership and cirriculum changes, may be locked out by the money issue. Which is unfortunate, because there’s great potential in an organization like this that gets young, energized creative people behind it.
I’m also kinda writing this to for all the kids out there to let them know that sometimes when you speak up for change you can make progressive things happen (even if no one acknowledges it).
August 27, 2008 at 8:31 am
It has been said before, but the choice of Rails vs. Django for the ONA workshop was made by somebody at ONA, who informed IRE’s executive director in June that Rails was the preference.
Regardless of which we had done, however, it makes little sense to try both in a single 8-hour session.
August 27, 2008 at 9:20 am
Thanks for the update, Derek. I’m stoked at least one of them are getting taught and I hope journalism orgs like ONA and IRE can continue partnering and doing these training sessions.
August 27, 2008 at 10:16 am
I have a question to which you might be able to help me find the answer: how much is the conference for students? I’m hoping to make it down there to do some reconnaissance for CoPress, but the cost is not apparent on their site.
August 27, 2008 at 10:17 am
Actually, I see no reason why Rails and Django can’t be done in the same session. They have a lot of similarities.
But anyway, I came to comment on the awards banquet dinner. I agree, $125 for what amounts to a $12 catered meal smack of price gouging. I’m not sure whose making those kinds of decisions, but they’re really unfair. And ludicrous.
August 27, 2008 at 7:09 pm
While I think Tom Regan has done a great job, he’s been a little heavy with the e-mails, IMHO.
August 27, 2008 at 7:41 pm
I want to clear up one thing about what I read above: the $125 ticket to the awards banquet.
I can appreciate the frustration expressed here. Unfortunately, we can’t charge any less for a banquet meal than the hotel charges. I could buy a Porsche for less. Believe me, I wish I could charge $12 per dinner. But that’s not gonna get you much at any hotel large enough to host this conference. Maybe two hors d’ouvres – seriously. That $125 is a break even price.
My job as executive director is to work with Amy Webb (this year) to get a create a really good conference — which she has most assuredly done – and to not lose money. Because if you lose money on conferences, sooner or later you can’t hold them any more.
I also want to correct thing I saw above. ONA members can also attend the job fair for free. The only cost is to those folks who aren’t ONA members.
August 27, 2008 at 8:14 pm
@Bryan Strangely, I don’t really mind the emails too much.
@Tom Thanks for commenting and clearing up that ONA members can attend the job fair for free without registering for the convention, I’ve corrected it above.
Regarding the meals/costs, I understand the challenges organizers of these events face. I’ve been involved in managing several conventions like this (not exactly this size, but close). I don’t know ONA’s budget or how they’re managing things but as long as your fiscally responsible and not catering everyone’s meals, if you line up a handful of corporate sponsors and you get a good deal on the hotel — it’s very easy to not loose money on events like this. In other major journalism organizations, the award entry fees alone usually cover most of these kind of events. But again, I don’t know ONA’s numbers, just what I’ve experienced.
I guess my (and I’m assuming others) fundamental challenge is, if one hotel charges you a ‘discount’ of $259 a night for a room and $125 for a single meal, maybe there’s a better hotel option out there. We don’t have to be at *THE* premier HIlton in absolute heart of the nation’s capitol. I’m staying at The Hilton Garden Inn, a few blocks away and it’s less than half the price of the conference hotel.
What’s done is done for this convention and again, please understand I think you guys have a done a great job! Thank you for your hard work and please keep listening to member’s thoughts!
September 11, 2008 at 5:43 am
Will:
I’m doing the Rails training here at ONA, and just to correct Derek slightly, it was our suggestion to do Rails and not Django. It was ONA’s decision, but our suggestion.
At the risk of fanning the flames of this stupid Coke/Pepsi debate (we’re above that, right?), the reason is that while more newspaper websites use Django, far far more websites period use Rails. (Also, a good number of news websites use Rails too, FYI — the AP, LA Times, AJC and the NYTimes of course just to name three I know of.)
We thought it would be a better sell at ONA than Django, and so far so good: We have 20 registered and a waiting list of 10. This is our first time doing this session, so if it turns out that Django is what people actually want, we’ll switch — no problems there.
I have no personal preference when it comes to teaching. I’ve have helped teach Django at each of the last three IRE conferences, and will be teaching a three-day Django bootcamp in March at IRE. So, I’m a fan of both.
Just so you know.