Taking it Back Home: Making The Most of Your ONA23 Experience Going Forward
7:30PM Aug 26, 2023
Speakers:
Keywords:
session
newsroom
talk
share
affirming
ideas
people
minutes
organization
feel
thinking
conference
experience
bit
news
hope
heard
actions
year
great
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is you
No, please do it
again
just to go Lord knows that I've tried to you said I was the only one No one likes be nice to you made this mess and left me with the pieces now I want to burn all the bridges between
Hello, good afternoon, everybody. How are you? It's a small, good crowd. I know with you know some of the COVID stuff. I'm not I would normally ask you to kind of get together a little bit but I'm going to try to adapt a little bit today. So that we don't be as close together. Good afternoon. I'm Kelsey proud. I am the learning director at the online news Association. My job is twofold at OMA and one of them is running the women's leadership accelerator program and the other is the learning director for the conference. Everything that's not sponsored, myself, my team and the program committee of volunteers puts together so you have me to either think or hate for what you've experienced this week. So it's really great to have you all here. Thank you all for coming to the conference and spending your time here. To have for how many of you is this your first conference? Okay, so a good number of you. Okay, that's great. Who in here thinks that they've been to the most conferences of everybody in the room? Anybody? Yeah. How many of you have been to all of them? Oh, my gosh, great. Well, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for coming back and being part of this community. Well, that helps. That helps. Well, it's good to have both a lot of newcomers. But then also, you know, some folks with some experience in the room. I think what we're going to do today is just this is just an opportunity. There has been a lot of information coming at you all week, right? I'm seeing a lot of nodding. A lot of nodding. And something I really like to do with groups, where we've had a lot of information coming at us. It's just to take a moment, just a moment, an hour, several minutes and try to just reflect on what has been going on so that we can then make everything that we've been doing a bit more actionable, right. Feel like we can kind of wrap our arms around it a little bit more. Okay. So, the things that I want to kind of have you guys understand is we'll break this down a little bit first, take out if you don't already. Take out something that you're comfortable writing with, whether that's a notebook and pen, or whether that is a computer, anything that you're comfortable taking notes with, that'll help you kind of process what we're about to do together. So I'll let you kind of do that for a second. And so I just kind of want to get you all into a space. This might feel a little bit woowoo but let's do it together. Okay, so we're gonna we're gonna just take a deep breath. This has been an insane few days, right? Okay. Close your eyes. This is the this is the downshifting part of OMA 23. Okay. Close your eyes. All right. Just breathe in with me. Hold it. Let it out. Let it out. We'll do one more. Breathe in. Hold it. Let it out. Okay, so we're getting all that kind of busy energy out of ourselves and like opening it up right to hold on to this, this knowledge and these experiences that we've had. So we're gonna break this down a little bit into three three areas, ideas, people and actions. Okay, we're not going to keep this you know, it's not going to be complicated. Ideas, people and actions. Okay. So, first, we want to talk a little bit about ideas and be thinking about ideas. If this conference is done anything, right. you've encountered some ideas this week that inspire you. you've encountered some ideas this week that challenge what you think you've encountered some ideas this week that hopefully affirm things that you already knew, or that made you feel more confident in some of the assumptions you might be making about the industry. So I would ask you to kind of take the next five minutes and I'll time you and write down the things that were the most inspiring to you. And the things that were most affirming to you so I'll give you five minutes to do that.
Guys in the back could play a little soft music that would be great. Instrumental please thank you. Thank you
that's great. Thank you.
For those of you who just joined us. We're spending some time writing about the ideas that either inspired us challenged us or affirmed us this week.
have about one more minute.
Okay, how was that was it good? Was it good to kind of center back on what you had thought about an experience this week after not having this firehose of information coming at you we're gonna do that a couple more times. So tell your brain that it'll get more in a minute. Does anyone want to share something that they are that they were inspired by this week or that that challenged what they thought or that affirmed something that they thought? Anyone? Yeah, see? And like I said, I, I will walk around.
So I just came from the session about re thinking about how to report on crime. And I, what challenged me was Where do you get the crime data from? So I'm actually working on a trend story back at home, where I was going to use the police data, and they were telling me that they don't audit their data, so you don't even know if it's correct or not. And so I should go to other sources. So I guess that challenged me a little bit. And then what kind of affirmed me was that I am actually writing a trench story on the crime story that I'm writing that I'm not just looking at incidences, so I felt like that for me. And then, I guess what inspired me would be that, the AI and the newsrooms and everything that's going on, in that it's going to take more than just one person or two people in the newsroom that it's going to take a collective collaborative effort to kind of really move that forward.
Thank you. Anyone else want to share? Oh, yeah, sure.
Thank you so much. I think it's crucial to say that I came here from Czech Republic. So we definitely share a very different experience, but it was nice to understand that different newsrooms like have different scale from different countries now share very simple similar concerns and problems. That was you know, calming and soothing. I love that there was a focus on well being and mental health which is crucial and I love that people repeated that several times that until you're not okay, you're not able to, you know, like, do your job appropriate way and that there are a lot of new tools, but we don't need to use them all. Because it's kind of impossible.
Thank you. Sure. That's great. Anyone else want to share things that they either were inspired by or affirm to them? Yeah.
So something from a session a couple of days ago, I have no idea what day was the they did a study and they found the audiences and people don't want to see developments anymore. And what we're really trained in is like giving the latest developments giving the context of how we got to this point. And kind of, you know, the audience just doesn't want to click on that or hear about that again, in the news cost. So how do we change it to Well, we've had it formatted like this all day, how can we change it and just really focus on today?
Anyone else? Yeah.
Michelle is gonna read a quote.
So I just came out of the session around December disinformation, and dealing with democracy. And Jonathan, whose name I missed. Last name I miss from the Philadelphia Inquirer said at the end that if you're only going to disinformation sessions, and you're not considering the importance of Dei, that you're really missing out the importance of like, we have to think about where AI covering democracy elections disinformation, along with these very human issues, as we've mentioned, mental health and what's going on with how everyone is being included or not included.
It's great. Anyone else want to share any ideas that affirmed them, surprised them? inspired them? Yeah.
I went to a session that was related to bias in newsrooms and reaching communities who are not being served by legacy media. And one of the ideas was to challenge every day, what is newsworthy and who was making that decision? And I felt that that was very affirming because the feeling some things that, you know, I felt were very newsworthy, you know, getting passed over and so I felt that that it was, like very affirming and inspiring. To just continue to challenge like, what that means.
Great, I saw a lot of nodding heads when you were speaking there. So I think that that really does resonate. That's great. Okay, awesome. Um, anyone else want to share anything that was affirming anything that made you emotional or angry? ideas that came up? That you're like, wow, I really disagree.
Because that's important. Yeah. We like to be a space for debate. I'm going to try to reach you want to make sure I'm gentle.
Like accident? Yeah, the on Wednesday, the first day I was here, someone from the Knight Foundation seem to question the idea that there is an inherent racism in philanthropy and I found that astounding given gestures wildly and I thought, you know, there's so much thoughtful programming here and at this conference, and to me, a feeling that I often have in some of these sessions is like, Oh, I wish I could get, you know, executive leadership or, you know, someone your particular or the people, the decision makers, the people with the most power and just force them to sit here and listen. Amazing. And you just see so many people affirming one another and the challenges that we all face, even if our you know, our newsrooms are different, our audiences are different. That we're all trying to solve for really the same problem. And, you know, this session was on transforming local news in particular, and I think until we can get to that base level of, of just affirming the facts, you know, white supremacy, racism is a fact it's not an opinion, which is that's an opinion was what was that and I was really taken aback and not something I would have expected. Of course, this was one person of course, and not the conference. But I'd like to think that the you know, the folks who are coming here, don't ascribe to that and that I think, I hope that eventually, you know, the number of people leading newsrooms will champion things that go against the view of personal rather than systems.
appreciate that and I saw your hand up over here.
So I was the person who asked that question. So thank you so much, especially because other people what I was told was that a lot of people came up to him I was apologizing to him. And I didn't have anyone come up to me. So I appreciate that so much. But there was something else that actually bothered me. So I think I think overall, particularly coming as a co founder of a youth media organization, in which I'm only with young people. I think I'm concerned that I just came out of a really great Gen Z session. That should have been a main feature the conversation for that was much earlier. In in comparison to like three AI discussions. Like even also, I think, in that same vein of like youth inclusivity most of these conversations are a good amount of these conversations even thinking about the extremism panel, which is amazing one did focused on young people as being the ones who are radicalized are most impacted by this issue. But there was not a single person under 25 on the panel to really speak to how we can penetrate that issue. So I think there's this kind of overall vein of adult autism that I think also encouraged him to be very comfortable just explaining all that nonsense to me. That needs to be addressed and work through
it. Really appreciate that feedback. Thank you.
Yep, who wants to go first? Emily.
I work at a really small news organization. And, and just something that has kind of frustrated me and that I've been thinking about a lot the last couple of days is just hearing a lot of people from really big news organizations talk about all these things they're doing and what we should all be doing and then just coming from this position of oh, how does my just my organization that's a fraction of the size of yours attempt to do any of this? And I did just come from a session that was about how small organizations can launch products that was really good, but, but it was kind of one of the only times I've heard people talking and acknowledging that just disparity in the resources that different people have and different organizations have and so that's something I've been thinking about a lot.
So I spent 15 years in public radio, on the digital side. So get your I guess you Yeah, and I think that the thing that we talked with speakers about and something that I believe in very deeply, is trying to get that message across. And so it's good feedback, you know, that, you know, it's something that we know that there are people here from all different places, all different sizes of organizations, and it's good to feel a little bit. I used to when I used to encounter that too, because I've been coming to these conferences before I was like, doing them for 10 years. And I used to kind of call it like inspir frustrated like, like, you know, like I'd be like Okay, so what's like the little piece of that, that maybe I can take back to my newsroom or you know, it's not perfect, but it's it's something I hear you 100% Yeah, Gabriella so it didn't really like make me angry but kind of made me think was we had a mental health session. Were one of the guest. I think they're just more comfortable in Spanish and so we held the session. bilingually and I really liked it. Even though English is the language I'm more comfortable in there. are some times when I get stuck, and I'm like that I could say that so much better in Spanish. And it was really It felt really good to be able to kind of be my whole self during that session. And so I think we should have more Spanish language or just bilingual language. Yeah. Great. All right, great. Well, I want to move on to thinking about people too, and thinking also about actions that we're going to take so people is kind of two ways to think about people. One is speakers that you've heard or, you know, workshop facilitators, people who stick in your mind, right people remember people, right? That's, that's why we are attracted to you know, certain presenters and different news organizations, that kind of thing. So who sticks out to you and from like, official capacities. Think about that. We're going to do some writing. And then on the unofficial side of things. What were the side conversations you had that were really meaningful? Did you meet someone new? That like sparked an idea in you or a new relationship of you know, friendship, camaraderie, maybe a new professional opportunity. Take stock of that both the formal people in formal settings that you met, and those in informal settings and I'll give you five minutes to think through the past couple days in both of those frames. And if we maestro's back there if we could have some jams again, that'd be great. Thank you.
Okay, about one more minute.
Okay. So it's about five minutes. All right. So this one's gonna be a little bit different because I know that the kind of informal capacity is probably pretty personal. So if there's it, but you're welcome to talk about that. If you'd like on the kind of formal capacity of things. Who are the people that you that really stand out for you that you either want to try to connect with or that you found interesting or inspiring or lit something up for you? Is there anyone want to share a person that they really identify in a formal capacity as a speaker, as a facilitator? Yeah, okay.
I went to a session this morning with Sam Ragland. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. And it was an extension of a session that I went to yesterday and it was about like encountering trauma and the news or countering trauma in the newsroom and just how you process some of the horrible things that we see and report on day. To day. Yesterday, my question kind of got shut down. I'm more on the TV side. And I think maybe the panelists just kind of switched off when I said that. But today, in today's session, I felt like acknowledged and she kind of adapted her answers not only to me, but also to like the general population of the room, whether they were in TV or print or digital, wherever that everyone was able to take something from the questions or the points made. I just really appreciated how she explained everything. And I'm hoping to set her up with my news director to discuss things further.
Great. Great, and you're almost kind of skipping ahead there to the actions part of what we're going to talk about. No, that's great. I mean, yeah. Hi. Oh, well,
I liked the session. It was Thursday at the table talk. words mean things stripping journalism jargon of its white supremacy. Yeah. And so I really want to call a my end, and how she really led the session and philosophy really great environment. I thought the topic was really interesting to have a lot of people were engaged, and then additionally kind of going into how like you know, connecting with other people. I just after that session had like an extended conversation just with people who happened to be sitting near me, didn't know them. There was no other reason. But we both are, there was like two of us or three of us total. We're all very engaged. And I was very nice connecting with those people based on the environment that she had. Created in the session and thinking beyond, you know, issues in journalism in general and newsrooms are just different, you know, types of media. Great.
That's great. Anyone else have any, any people in particular that will really stick in their head? Yeah.
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the all the three ladies from justify project who were talking about vertical videos, and they haven't heard about them since prior to the conference and it was great Samantha's session today Samantha session from American Press Institute about like, I guess we were in the same one. Yeah, about dealing with trauma as a manager was I felt that I actually cried a little bit there. And it's good that Jeremy's here because I wanted to say that his session was the first and I got really intimidated by the number of tools he's using on a daily basis. But then I decided that I will try to fit some of them into my daily routine. Yeah, but it was very impressive. Thank you
Jeremy. Caplan, everybody give a wave wonder tools extraordinaire, anyone else have someone they that really stuck with them that they want to share? Oh, yeah, great in the back.
Hi, thank you. Um, I guess for me, even though I was No, it's a cliche, but I was just really pleasantly surprised when I went to the Nicole Hannah Jones speech. I think the reason being is for me being an immigrant. I remember when I moved here, one of the issues I realized with the journalism is that just because everything would lead because it's American. They say oh, it's very neutral. is the best or like journalism, but then I remember just realized that there was a lot of bias. So which is very like affirming, like, how like you should talk about a lot of the bias. A lot of time like things get pinned, then as neutral but they actually not and they hurt other people.
Thank you so much. That's great. Anyone else? Yeah, for their like I said, I would normally cluster everybody together, but I'm really trying not to do that. So thanks.
Hi. Yeah, I went to a session yesterday. And the speakers were Ken Burns and Ellery Jones, who are to trans journalist and they talk about how to report in the trans community and how we only report on them when something happens in their environment or when there is policy that is being active and are live. So I think it's very important to be able to not just report when something happens but you know, they're part of the community to
anyone else, people okay. Any Oh, yeah, absolutely. Do this as a team.
Hi. I, I've met a lot a lot of people you were talking about, like more informal settings. And one thing that I started to implement this time that I hope works to maintain relations is that I started to just make notes in my app of the name of the person and the interaction that I had with that person. Just so that for one I can keep track because he observed so much information and it's so hard. One of the hardest things for me is to follow up afterwards. And so, I the time that you you gave us I'd sort of like went back and I started to make notes of like, why that was meaningful and how I want to carry that on. So I just wanted to like maybe pass on that advice to others.
Yeah, thanks. It's so funny. I mean, sometimes we're so busy doing all the things we just don't have a moment we just never do this and then we go straight back to work or school or wherever we go. And it just goes, right. It's like, wait a minute, I went on a. I was there for almost a solid week. Where did it go? Yeah, so that's great. So that's a good tip. Use the app to do that. Anyone else about people? You can also move to actions Yeah.
I am also really bad with names. So I just the whole panel with the MJ bear fellows was really awesome because I'm somebody who's really, really early in their career. And I think somebody had mentioned that there was not a lot of sessions geared towards more Gen Z topics. I really appreciate it kind of all the advice and experiences they were able to offer.
And this is a not so secret way for me to learn as well. I hope that's obvious. So that we are getting better at what we do for you. So I've heard some very good some consistent feedback and guess what? We'll talk about it. That's great. Anything else on people? Okay, great. All right. So we're gonna now talk about actions. So when you get back to home, or work or school, or your life in some other way, that is not this bubble called on a 23. I'd like to spend the next five minutes writing down the top three, if there are three doesn't have to be three. It can be more than three if it feels like it's right. Actions that you want to take, based on what you have processed this week. People that you've talked to ideas that have inspired you affirmed you things that you were sitting in sessions or at dinner, or in that hallway conversation, and said oh my gosh, I connected the dots, right? Those dots connecting moments where you're like, oh, yeah, the thing I've been stewing about at work, or that thing I've been stewing about in that project, or oh my gosh, that that tool that I've been wanting to use for a while, and I couldn't figure out a use for it. Now I'm going to use it for this. This is where we start talking about that. That's where we start writing those things down. So I'll give you five minutes.
One more minute.
Okay, that was about five minutes. How did that feel to write down what you're going to do? Good. I'm seeing some some nodding. Kind of empowering a little bit. Like you're distilling everything and it's not swirling so much. That's generally how I feel when I do that. Great, awesome. So we want to share anything they want to do. Yeah.
Hello, so I have 16 pages of notes from this week and my first order of business is condensing them. And then from that make a priority list of what's like something that could be a tangible idea, and what kind of lift it would be and prioritize based on that for if it's within my capacity, if it's something that would be in our team, if it would be something to bring up higher up through the organization. So first thing is just really organizing, and then determining how to share out the information like it'll be how I get my thoughts down, but then bringing it to my boss and where I think could best be spread across the organization, if it's like with our product teams, if it's with our development and membership teams if it's with the newsroom like because I can't just keep this to myself because I'm only one person and I can't try and make it all happen so but for the things that do get kind of Greenlit like how I can determine my time for follow through. Like, if I'm going to do maybe a content audit or if I'm going to do something new with our social strategy, which are ones that I've definitely I've I've made stars throughout my notes of like, this is what I need to follow back on. So that's kind of it's been nice to plot it out with this exercise. So thank you.
Yeah, this is key. I'm so glad you brought that up because I think everybody has their own way of kind of distilling things down and this is meant to be a first step right it's the first moment the first breath that you get just to take a pause right. So that's great. And you also touched on something else, which is the super secret, second people part of this presentation, which is who when you're thinking about the things you're going to do, they're almost always tied to other people, right? Almost always. So the questions of asking yourself, Who do you need to talk to? What meetings do you need to set? How can you convey the idea to the person in a way that they will be receptive to it? Do you want to meet with someone maybe in a different department that you've never met with before because you found something interesting that you think would you know, connect your department something like that? I would highly, highly recommend attaching people that you need to talk to, to each one of the things that you want to do. Because often we can't do it alone. That's that's a great point. Anyone else want to share something they're going to do? Yeah. Hey.
Speaking of people, it's been a difficult week somewhat because there's been some news of layoffs in my state and in the industry that I'm in which is nonprofit media. So as somebody that was recently laid off as well, it just reminded me me to reach out to those people who may be affected but also like all of those people that helped me now that I'm in a journalism support group and I'm I mean, not record. This is my support group, but I'm in a journalism support organization, and I'm a little bit more able to, you know, share my experience and give support. It's also just a really good reminder that I want a is a community outside of this and that there are ways to like uplift and support each other outside of these walls, because you know, it's just been so nice to turn to somebody and say, this was hard for me. But I am so grateful that I could just talk to somebody about it like today.
Yeah. I don't mean to put a shameless plug in here, but I swear to God, it's legit, which is that you know, we have a we've known a Slack community that can be continued to place for questions, conversations. Hey, I'm thinking about this as anybody else dealing with the same thing. So feel free to jump in there and experience that same thing even we can't be near each other. Anyone else on this side of the room want to share Hi.
This is kind of touching on things that you already touched on but I think that one thing that I really want to do so I'm an audience engagement editor, and I met with partner reps here so like our YouTube Partner up was here and read it and like, making sure I follow up and like actually foster those relationships that I created and like a lot of them I already knew, but I personally haven't talked to them because other people on my team talk to them, and like trying to make sure that I actually reach out and do that. That's like one of my top priorities after this conference.
Anyone else want to share something they're gonna do? They're thinking about doing Yeah, over there. Okay. Thanks. Okay. All right, here we go.
Like surprisingly, I had almost the same topics as the First Lady. Over there. But my focus is, at today's session, it was said that you should understand how to talk even in your newsroom to engage more people and to explain why do you want to you know, bring those changes to the team. And like, this will be my focus because I really want to get as many people on board as possible. But when we speak off, I don't know, like, social media and other stuff, especially in a newsrooms that have a great history and maybe a little bit conservative. It's very important to understand why and like having this support and having all those wonderful people saying those things that I you know, like sort of believed in but didn't have an actual proof. That's very inspiring. So thank you very much for doing that.
Yeah, anyone else want to talk about anything they want to do? Okay, all right. Great. Well, I did allow, you know, an hour for the session, but I just wanted to make sure that you know, we were all spending as much time as we needed together. Does anyone else have any comments or thoughts? There's there, been able to distill anything that they'd like to share? Or the questions for each other? Yeah.
I just wanted to say thank you for creating the space to sort of have this conversation. Yeah. I know I was saying yesterday, right. I was saying yesterday I'm like, I feel like we need like a five minute like cooldown. Like just physiologically. But so when I went to OMA last year, you know, I had like, walked away with like a 40 page Google Doc, like after I you know, condensed to cleaned it up. Like very, maybe, like overly comprehensive. And someone in my newsroom who works with like, grassroots local orgs. He runs a small team. He's like, Oh, thank you for putting this together. I shared this with all of our partners and sort of speaks to what a few of you have mentioned. If not, you know, keeping the information to yourself, you know, you want to share it. And I think that is one of the overarching takeaways that both last year and this year and talking to like RJ I fellows, talking to people just in the hallway, it's like, you really don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are things that you can replicate even if your newsroom has a different size or your audience is slightly different. But it feels more possible to do those things when we have these really supportive spaces. So I just wanted to say thank you and, you know, feels good to walk away with that sort of uplift even when the news industry is we're a little messy.
It's a little messy. Yeah. And something that many of you have kind of touched on and I just want to make sure that, you know, we, you know, I don't speak on behalf of on AI, but I guess I speak for myself, but it's, you know, we know that for many people there aren't, you know, 2530 people from their organization coming to the conference, sometimes it's one person, sometimes it's a few people, we would love for everybody to come and encourage it. But we we know that sometimes, you know, you're the delegate, right? Sometimes it's it's you using your training budget for the year to do that. And so we want to make it as worthwhile and experience as possible and something to help you distill what that is to share with your colleagues. So that's an attempt at that this afternoon. Anything else? Anyone wants to share? Questions, comments to each other? Great. Well, thank you so much for your time this afternoon. I hope this was a helpful first step and go be well. Safe travels. Thank you.