You’ve heard this before: If you can only invest in one training opportunity this year, make it ONA24. The conference is a one-stop shop for professional development needs and practical training. We guide presenters to provide actionable takeaways from each session — that’s why an overwhelmingly majority of attendees (90%!) say they learn something that they can apply to their work within a month.
With sessions being added through August, here’s a spotlight on professional development and newsroom strategy opportunities at ONA24:
Early-to-Mid-Career
First-Time Managers Training* — Designed to provide mid-career leaders with everything they need to step into management roles for the first time and will guide participants through the challenges associated with navigating new responsibilities, managing difficult relationships, fostering work culture and building power and influence.
Find Your Mid-Career Groove Workshop* — In a mid-career funk or feel stuck under layers of politics and stakeholders? Come away with frameworks and tools to help you find your north star. Learn how to stand out amongst your leaders, peers and reports.
Early + Mid-Career Advice Sessions* (Repeated) — ONA leaders will lead small-group career advice sessions with up to three early- to mid-career attendees in a group setting.
Calling All Change-Makers!* — Pushing for change in your newsroom but finding it hard to get staff onboard? This session will take you through a transformation framing exercise that will not only help you build a clear case for change (hint: it saves or makes money!) but also shows you how to execute change, with step by step org structure and workflow development best practices.
Going Solo: Creator Journalism Workshop* — Designed for journalists who are actively considering moving from a traditional setting to full-time creator journalism, this high-level workshop will provide attendees with a clear plan of action on when and how they might go solo on Substack, YouTube, etc. Attendees should be mid-career journalists with an existing portfolio of work and/or a strong individual following.
Special thanks to our ONA24 sponsors.
Senior Level
AI Executive Summit: Operationalizing AI* — This summit provides practical insights on catalyzing innovation, mitigating risks, and preparing for the future opportunities that AI offers to enhance media operations and content strategies. Designed for journalism leaders and executives eager to leverage AI’s transformative potential within the media industry, participants will leave with operational strategies for integrating AI and a starter roadmap for their organization.
Building & Maintaining a Local News Business*(Repeated) — Learn about LION’s pillars of sustainability and have a chance to work on an exercise designed to help you increase your understanding of the financial health of your news business (or potential business). This session is relevant for publishers and editors of existing publications and entrepreneurs who are planning to launch a new digital news site or other local news product.
Slay Your Dragon: Deliver Your Most-Important Performance Challenge with Media Transformation Challenge @ONA* — This session is for senior leaders (and those who support them) seeking to lead major change in their organizations. It also is for funders and network organizations who want to increase the odds their efforts deliver intended outcomes.
Management and Newsroom Strategy
Diversity is More than Staffing, It’s News Coverage — Join this important conversation and learn how newsroom leaders at every level can ensure missing people and other sensitive topics are covered accurately and free of bias.
Leadership in the Age of AI — Covering the management skills news leaders need to confront the challenges and opportunities of changing technologies, this high-level conversation will provide concrete tactics for tackling newsroom AI experimentation and navigating resistance to innovation.
How to Communicate Audience Insights to the Newsroom — It can be daunting to report to the newsroom which stories are and are not resonating with audiences. Join this important conversation and learn how to better communicate and contextualize data insights – which data points to highlight, what data visualizations tell the best story – all with the goal of improving reporters’ pitches, editors’ commissions and overall newsroom strategy.
What Do We Make, Again? Helpful Product Strategies For Busy Newsrooms — Learn practical ways to bring more product strategy to busy newsrooms and build products that center the audience and foster business sustainability. Hear examples from newsrooms of various sizes and with different business models. Leave with practical takeaways and templates to bring to your newsroom.
Recruiting and Managing a Diverse Cohort of Freelancers — Learn about the best practices and mistakes to avoid for all parties involved in the creation and publishing of freelance work. Participants will leave the session with a clear understanding of the mindsets, habits and tools to make a freelance journalism interaction successful for everyone involved: the individual journalist, the assigning editor, and the media organization.
How to Use Empathy to Build Better Editors and Newsroom Leaders — As essential as the editor-reporter relationship is to good journalism, many organizations still feature uncomfortable power dynamics, leading to low levels of trust and stifled voices. This important skill-building workshop will share simple, effective tips and templates for thoughtful, actionable feedback. Expect to learn how front line editors and newsroom leaders can bring empathy and humility to their work to help their organizations, and their people, thrive.
Trailblazing Women of Color: Harnessing the Power of Being the “Only One” — This high-level, insightful panel will help women journalists and leaders of color turn the burden of being “the only one in the room” into empowered and effective news leadership, showing attendees how to be the manager they never had and use authenticity and empathy to build cultures of inclusion, diversity and allyship.
Speed Skillsharing — Unlike anything else at ONA24, this hyper-dynamic, super-interactive skillsharing session is your chance to swap skills with fellow attendees, all subject matter experts from some corner of the digital journalism world. Bring your best tricks, tips and hard-won knowledge (that can be taught in 5 minutes or less) – the more varied the better! – and walk away with a randomized set of new expertise and abilities.
*Session requires advance sign-up.
