My biggest takeaway from the Online News Association (ONA) conference in New Orleans, Louisiana is this: journalists are working hard, but struggling to stay on top of the rapidly developing digital world.
This was ONA’s 20th anniversary.
In the last 20 years, what has been expected of journalists has shifted dramatically. Things, stories, experiences are being driven by social media and the news has had to adjust accordingly. This is really the reason ONA exists. Everything is online.
The sessions I went to and what I learned had more to do with doing journalism well on the internet than doing well in general. This is an important distinction since adding the element of “online” actually adds overwhelming layers of an infinite number of things to think about, pay attention to and address.
What do I mean by this? Well, rapidly developing technology and the vast world of virtual reality means:
- A journalist has to do it all: report, photograph, film, stay ever-present on social media, and also stay somehow human. Gone are the days of hiring a full-time photographer. This is something we have known for a few years now and did not come as a surprise to me at this conference. However, the reality of what that meant for journalists doing “just one thing” was made especially dauntingly apparent here.
- Journalism has to think vertically. For a long time, journalists have been thinking horizontally. Horizontally-shot photographs are what made the front page because that is what fit the layout best. Even when most of the news was digested on the computer or the television, journalists were still thinking horizontally since that is what fit those screens best. However, we have really rather suddenly entered a vertical world: the phone. The amount of conversations I sat in on surrounding how to grow a paper’s social media presence using vertical imagery shouldn’t have been surprising, but as a visual-thinker, I cannot bring myself to warm up to the idea of shooting video vertically or making a horizontal video fit a vertical screen.
- News outlets are creating positions not only for social media teams, but for audience editors who essentially exist to gauge social media response towards (what The Washington Post Senior Audience editor Everdeen Mason dubs) social media “experiments.” This means diving into analytics to determine beyond what went well, but to gauge why things did not go well, to come up with digital transformation strategies, to teach their reporters where their traffic is coming from, and to effectively develop an audience on all social media platforms. Yes, that even means some audience editors are thinking of ways to appeal to Tik-Tok audiences.
After this conference, I am not sure what the future of journalism is. All I know is what other journalists know:
- Good journalism is a necessity.
- Good journalism is going to have to keep up with the times.
But the issue with keeping up with the times is, more than being concerned with what we are leaving behind as we move forward into a digital world, we need to be aware of what we are taking with us.
As Rappler journalist Maria Ressa pointed out in her speech at ONA this year, “Colonialism moved online…Lies laced with anger and hate spread faster than boring facts.”
Journalists have a lot to do, it’s incredibly overwhelming, nobody knows exactly what’s next, but hey! The NOLA food was AMAZING.
Annika Gordon
Did you totally sound like a dweeb at that “networking” luncheon you went to? Did you spill your drink on the News Editor at The Boston Globe? (Don’t worry, I didn’t actually do this. I did talk to her though, and she looked at me like, “Girl, Please” when I said I was a UP student applying to The Boston Globe internship.) Don’t sweat it. While receptions, luncheons, and beltlines designed specifically for networking can be useful, particularly because employers are on the hunt for young (and cheap) talent, they’re also nerve-wracking and not always effective. Everyone has their guard up in a strange hyper-networking, ‘let-me-pitch-myself-to-you-in-five-minutes’ kind of way. It’s hard to make a genuine connection. But conferences are great because everyone is bottled in the same space together, even after the awkward formalities are over. Olivia and I made much friendlier connections at the hotel bar later that night ordering french fries. We curated friendly faces through karaoke and coffee lines (good things come to those who wait….. in ridiculously long lines for caffeine). It’s easier to be yourself when you’re in a more natural setting. And your mom is right, simply being yourself can get you where you need to go. So let your hair down, pull your name tag off. Who knows who will be standing next to you when you do?
You will literally never, ever, ever regret it. You will, however, greatly regret it if you chicken out and shuffle out of the room as fast as possible. My first couple conferences in New York, I thought this was ridiculous. I would see people like Malika go up and chat with freaking Wesley Lowrey after a talk and I would be baffled. It was like watching brain surgery. I’d always tell myself that they probably have a million places to be right now and I have no business taking up their time. I’d also tell myself that I do not have a clever enough comment or question to impress them with, and I will just end up embarrassing myself. But I had to get over this when I went to David Fahrenthold’s session on interviewing. If you follow me on social media and pay even the slightest bit of attention, you should know that David Fahrenthold has been my deepest journalistic obsession for about a year now. He’s a Washington Post reporter who won the Pulitzer Prize this year for his reporting on Donald Trump’s charities and the breaking of the Access Hollywood tapes. My favorite thing about him, though, is his first-person account in The Post 
There is a caveat to the #2 tip above. Don’t talk to someone just to talk to them. Don’t talk to them for their title. Don’t talk to them JUST because you think you might get a job out of it. The reason my really good interactions went really well is that I knew the people I was talking to and I was genuinely excited to talk to them. Networking isn’t just about getting a job. It’s about learning. Learning more about yourself, more about the work that you want to do. I didn’t talk to people like David because I thought he would hire me. I knew he had a job I wanted and I knew he did that job really well and I wanted to know more about his experience, and about what kind of person he is so I can determine whether I can be that kind of person. Call me crazy, but I’m not going to go and DM him on Twitter now asking if he’ll put in a good word for me on my Post application. I got exactly what I needed out of our conversation. Not a job, just reassurance that I’m in the right place doing what I’m meant to be doing.
This gets me to my last bit. I’m still not convinced that this whole network thing isn’t all a hoax. While journalists might call ONA a “networking conference” (the conference bit is true for all the useful sessions about new technology and online strategies), I’d rather call it a “support group”. As it was pointed out in the panel “How to Get Shit Done”, this journalism gig is really hard, harder than most jobs. Vice said it best: 
UP Beacon staff blog 