ONA takes 5 steps forward, 1 step back

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).