ONA 2011 conference – top takeaways
September 27th, 2011 § 1 Comment
I am now one week into a three-month research visit to the US (I’m hoping I will have more time to blog now that I am not teaching). The University of Maryland has been kind enough to host me and I will be using my time here to research users of American participatory journalism sites.
Luckily for me, my visit co-incided with the annual Online News Association (ONA) conference. This annual conference brings together online news journalists, executives, academics and technical representatives and left me feel excited about the future of our industry. Below is an overview of some of the best sessions that I attended.
Entrepreneurial journalism
One of the key themes, for me, from the conference was the success that start ups in the online journalism space were having. Find a round up of the session in tweets here and a great presentation on the process for getting a journalism start up off the ground.
Using social media wisely
As journalist’s we need to be on Facebook and Twitter – right? We are also finding ourselves solicting images, tips and sources from anonymous internet dwellers. So how do we verify this information? Here are some notes from an ONA presentation on just that – which interestingly highlighted the importance of traditional journalism work – even in this space. Who would have thought!
For some more detailed information on how to use Facebook (particularly the newest features just unveiled), check out Facebook’s Journalism Program Manager Vadim Lavrusik’s presentation. I’ll blog more on my thoughts on these changes soon.
Top techy trends
This was one of my favourite sessions – and not just because Amy offered freebies (bacon toothpaste anyone?). If you think about all of the possibilities that some of these great new advances in technology offer journalism you’ll see that our industry could have a very bright future indeed.
If you are looking for more recaps from the conference, the folks at Journalism.co.uk wrote this great blog post.
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