ONA12, Sept. 20-22, will tap into the Bay Area’s innovative media, tech and entrepreneur communities and the hundreds of biotech and information technology companies that are thriving in Silicon Valley. Add world-class restaurants, museums, theaters and orchestras and a ballpark, and you have the makings of a terrific three-day (or longer) stay.

Here’s a guide to who’s running the show, where you can stay and how much you should budget.

Meet our co-chairs

Pam Maples, Innovation Director at the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University 
Pam is deeply involved in the Knight Fellowships’ efforts to help journalists identify and develop new models for sustaining high quality journalism during this period of profound transformation. She helps guide Knight Fellows who are pursuing ideas focused on journalistic innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership and works to connect them to resources, people and organizations at Stanford and in Silicon Valley. Pam joined the Knight Fellowships in 2010, after extensive experience as an editor and reporter.

From 2006-2009, she was managing editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where she led the full integration of print and online news operations. Under her leadership, the staff was recognized for the first time with several national digital journalism awards and was a 2009 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news for its real-time coverage of a mass public shooting. After the Post-Dispatch, Pam worked with the video news start-up Newsy.com, where she developed editorial strategy and operations.

Earlier in her career, Pam worked for several years at The Dallas Morning News, ultimately as assistant managing editor/investigations and projects. She was a reporting member of a Morning News team that won a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Pam also worked as a newspaper reporter and editor in Denver, Albuquerque and Springfield, Mo. She has served as a Pulitzer juror (investigative panel chair, 2009) and is a member of the Journalism and Women’s Symposium. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and was a 2006 Knight Fellow at Stanford.

Anthony Moor, Director of Editorial Operations at Yahoo! 
Anthony is the media network’s leader for product and platform innovation. Until recently, he led the company’s local news efforts as Managing Editor. In Nov. 2011, the team launched its first comprehensive Yahoo local news and information experience for the United States. He served as Deputy Managing Editor/Interactive at The Dallas Morning News. In 2008 the site was honored with RTNDA’s Edward R. Murrow Award as best non-broadcast Web site.

He was editor of OrlandoSentinel.com, a 2007 Knight-Batten Award for Innovation winner and 2006 Online News Association general excellence finalist. Prior to that he was New Media Editor at the Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle, where he devised the paper’s convergence strategy and won a 2003 OJA for creative use of the medium. He developed an interest in interactive media at San Francisco’s KRON-TV during the dot-com boom, while covering ventures with names such as RealAudio, Hotwired, Quokka and PointCast. The lure of the Internet startup eventually enticed him to join a broadband business news pioneer called On24, as a financial correspondent.

In his early career, he was an investigative reporter in Buffalo and state capitol bureau chief in Santa Fe, N.M. He spent two years in Tokyo working variously at the ABC News and CNN bureaus. He has served on the board of the Online News Association, where he directed the Online Journalism Awards, and was a director of ASNE, the American Society of News Editors. He holds a degree in Astrophysics and American Civilization from Williams College. And he’s been on “Oprah” — although not for any professional reason.

Burt Herman, Co-Founder, Storify 
Burt, the ONA Board liaison to ONA12, co-founded Storify, a platform for creating stories from social media. He has been named by the Poynter Institute as one of the most influential journalists in social media, and frequently speaks and writes about the changing media landscape. Burt is an ONA Board member.

Burt previously worked as a journalist at The Associated Press. In his dozen years there, he served as Korea bureau chief, founded a bureau covering the five countries of former Soviet Central Asia and reported on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other assignments worldwide. Burt was a 2008-9 Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University, where he also received a bachelor’s degree with honors in political science and Master’s degree in Russian and Eastern European studies.

David Cohn, Program Chair, Founder and Director at Spot.us 
David (aka DigiDave) is the founder and director of Spot.us, a nonprofit that is pioneering “community funded reporting.” He has written for Wired, Seed, Columbia Journalism Review and The New York Times among other publications. While working toward his Master’s degree at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Cohn worked with Jay Rosen as editor of the groundbreaking Newassignment.net in 2006, which focused on citizen journalism and ways news organizations could explore the social web. Cohn also worked with Jeff Jarvis from Buzzmachine.com to organize the first Networked Journalism Summits, which brought together the best practices of collaborative journalism three years in a row (2007-2009).

In academics, he is a lecturer at UC Berkeley’s journalism school and was a fellow at the University of Missouri’s Journalism school at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. He has been a contributing editor at NewsTrust.net, a founding editor of Broowaha and an advisor to many new media projects from OffTheBus.net and Beatblogging.org to The Public Press. He is a frequent speaker on topics related to new media and beyond.

Meet our hotel

Reserve your room at the Hyatt Regency, overlooking San Francisco Bay, an easy walk to many nearby sights, and located directly across the street from the Ferry Building, with over 200 shops and restaurants. Rates for a standard room are $235, a great deal for this higher-end city, and door-to-door service between SFO Airport and the Hyatt is $16 online or $17 in person. Reserve your room here.

Meet our new registration packages

Registration for ONA12 opens April 10. Join ONA and save $300 on the general pass.

Our goal is to keep our conference as affordable as possible, and this year, registration fees will remain at their 2011 rates. We’ll also stick with the restructured fee timeline we established last year. Translation: The earlier you register, the lower your fee.

This year, we’re also reworking Thursday’s programming so one price will get you into any on-site workshop, the Career Summit or Job Fair on Thursday, Sept. 20. (Any other events outside the hotel will be a separate registration, as always.) Look for more details on the Thursday workshop pass in the coming weeks.

There will be 1,000 general passes available for ONA12. Once we’re sold out, we really are sold out.

ONA12 General Pass prices

Interested in sponsoring or exhibiting? Fill out this form or email Tom Regan.

Cheers,

Pam Maples, Anthony Moor and Burt Herman, ONA12 Conference Chairs
Jane McDonnell, Executive Director

Way up in the mountains, nestled in the sleepy town of Park City, Utah, the Sundance Film Festival shines out as an annual beacon showcasing the best of independent film in a sea of mediocre mainstream releases. Each year, filmmakers, composers, actors and marketers make the pilgrimage to Utah to soak up two weeks of workshops, networking and films. Sure, movie buffs love Sundance — but what lessons does the festival have to teach journalists? Read on.

1. Nourish growing talent

Most of the films at Sundance have gone through one of the many Sundance Labs, specialized incubators that allow emerging filmmakers, screenwriters, directors, storytellers and composers to spend the summer immersed in their art form. Many of these creators go on to debut their projects at the main festival a few years later. Sundance Labs nurtures ideas into projects by surrounding the young and promising with a network of mentors, exposure to fellow artists, access to the resources of the institute and a built-in support community. While journalism has fellowships and internship programs, it could be that a laboratory environment with one-on-one creative thinking would spark more insights around our evolving field.

2. Experiment with new forms of storytelling.

Walking into Sundance’s New Frontier — incorporating media installations, multimedia performances, transmedia experiences, panel discussions, feature films — can be a mind-melting experience, especially when the first exhibit is a non-linear, scrolling, three-dimensional story which may (or may not) have been about war. But many of the exhibits focused on one main goal: exploding the boundaries of traditional narratives while carving out new ways to convey (and sometimes exchange) information with participants. In the words of the New Frontier organizers:

Rapidly advancing screen culture enables new modes of communication through the moving image. Our gadget-encrusted bodies plug us into a bioelectric architecture where cinematic stories inform and validate ideas, philosophies, and customs. Today’s media landscape is cyborgish — part human, part machine. Stories are collectively produced through interactive participation, and the boundaries among author/audience/artwork have become permeable and interchangeable. Normal is not what it used to be.

The 2012 New Frontier artists, filmmakers, journalists, game designers and media scientists present cinematic works that integrate humanoids with the technosphere.

From iPad-facilitated interactive conversations like “Question Bridge: Black Males” to 3-D immersive experiences like “Hunger in Los Angeles,” to games about oil and capitalism, the New Frontier artists aimed to touch audiences without the support of a traditional story structure.

3. Talk to more strangers

One of the best ways to get around Sundance is on its elaborate shuttle system that efficiently zips patrons from venue to venue. Standing shoulder to shoulder on these packed buses is a little less fun, but the number of spontaneous conversations can be attributed to the close proximity to other movie lovers. A few stacked boxes of Coronas leads to a conversation around the best skiing in the area. A boisterous young child on the bus sparks a conversation about “the Sundance people” from a local perspective. And an offhanded chat about movie rituals precipitates a deeper conversation of why vanity projects so often fail to connect with audiences. While the close quarters weren’t always a picnic, it forced many people to break out of their comfort zones and actually interact. Instead of using Facebook and Twitter to find people outside (but still inside) our social networks, striking up a conversation with a stranger next to you can lead to more opportunities than we think.

4. Leverage industry-based knowledge (outside of journalism)

While journalism and filmmaking feel like two different worlds, they are actually facing many of the same problems, including a collapse of traditional funding models, a swift and changing Internet landscape and dwindling resources. In response to the needs of struggling artists, Sundance created Artist Services, a web portal that seeks to demystify funding models, distribution and marketing.

Featuring amazing case studies on topics like crowdfunding through Kickstarter and the many steps in a successful digital marketing campaign, Artist Services seeks to elevate the conversations happening in the film world and make them publicly accessible.

Slide photo is by Eduardo Castro via Flickr and licensed under Creative Commons.

On the afternoon of Dec. 30, I was sitting in D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) command center with more than a dozen other journalists waiting for Chief Cathy Lanier and Mayor Vincent Gray to arrive.

They had called the New Year’s Eve press conference to talk about the year in crime and policing, and, in part, to talk about MPD’s incredible 94 percent homicide case closure in 2011. It’s a good thing the closure rate was listed in the press packet that was handed out; if it hadn’t been, I would have thought that I misheard the number.

I knew that nowhere near 94 percent of 2011′s homicides listed in the Homicide Watch database were closed. I pulled up the site and did a quick check to make sure. According to our data, 61 of 108 homicides — or 56 percent — had been closed with an arrest.

I checked with Lanier later that afternoon and learned that the case-closure arithmetic MPD was using included the closures of homicides from previous years in the calculation of the 2011 calendar year’s closure rate. I called sources, double checked that I understood the math, and spoke with them about what they thought about how the number was calculated.

About three hours after the press conference wrapped up, I had a story published in our Year in Review package explaining the much-repeated case closure rate.

This weekend, an investigations team at the Washington Post published an excellent package following up on Homicide Watch D.C.’s reporting.

Cheryl Thompson wrote:

The closure rate [Lanier] presents for the District is 154 percent higher than Boston’s and at least 104 percent higher than Baltimore’s, and it gives residents reason to believe that D.C. police have been remarkably successful at solving homicide cases under her watch.

But an examination of District homicides found that the department’s closure rate is a statistical mishmash that makes things seem much better than they are. The District had 108 homicides last year, police records show. A 94 percent closure rate would mean that detectives solved 102 of them. But only 62 were solved as of year’s end, for a true closure rate of 57 percent, according to records reviewed by The Post.

D.C. police achieved the high closure rate last year by including about 40 cases from other years that were closed in 2011.

The cases date from 1989, records show. The pattern was first reported by a local Web site, homicidewatch.org, in December.

Be sure to check out the excellent graphics the Post team created to go with the story.

Thompson’s story hits all the right notes: It’s a meaningful follow, advances the story and it credits an outside outlet for getting the news first.

I’m looking forward to seeing where the story goes from here, but it’s worth taking a moment to point out why Homicide Watch D.C. had the story on Dec. 30: The structure of the Homicide Watch database meant that I knew the numbers before I went to the press conference, and that when the numbers didn’t sound right I was able to check them right away. I didn’t have to make an official request or, heaven forbid, file a FOIA. Sure, it helped that I knew which sources to call at 5 p.m. on Dec. 30, but I also knew exactly what to ask them.

Good reporting frequently comes out of thorough investigations; the Post’s story is an excellent example of this. But good reporting happens more regularly and more quickly when information is organized from the start and a beat is built around a clear organizing principle. Homicide Watch’s deadline reporting of the story was a good example.

Slide photo is by Roger H. Goun via Flickr and licensed under Creative Commons.

It’s hard out here for an Android user.

All your friends with Apple products just go on and on about the eleventy-billion apps in their freaking store (425,000, to be precise). Am I using Flipboard? No! Did I download that awesome Nike women training app? No! But the bane of my existence has been Instagram, which might as well be the little app that could. Everyone loves this app that makes all your photos look cool and interesting – even if you’re just shooting a cup on a table. And they even have an e-card maker called Lovestagram, created by Kaitlyn Trigger, who (fun fact) is dating Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger.

It’s so cool! But guess what? No Instagram for Android. I’m starting to feel like the Jan Brady of the tech world. “Apple, Apple, Apple!”

Luckily, the Android market provided solutions, both from big-name brands like Picasa and Flickr, and from smaller developers. I chose to look at five free applications from small development houses: PicSay, BeFunky, Photo Art, Photo Effects and Pixlr-o-matic. I then took a very boring, everyday shot of a bus stop.

PicSay is a highly promoted option, but a kind of boring one. The free version allows for about six effects (most with color, like “sepia” or “invert”) and for captions and stickers. I did a distortion and added a Droid to my random bus stand photo, but nothing made me want to continue using the software.

Photo Art had a gorgeous-looking opening page, but fell short in the effects department. All of the options dramatically reduced the quality of the photo, and that took all the joy out of experimenting with the various filters and abilities.

Photo Effects offered slightly better quality than the other apps tested. The images were consistently sharp and clear through the filters. However, the only options are filters — and to get more than the initial handful, you have to upgrade to pro or download a bunch of other apps by the development company.

Pixlr-o-matic also had a pretty interface and options for filters, editing, and frames. It had the smoothest navigation, but naming the filter effects after people (i.e., a blue filter was called “Josh”) made them hard to remember.

The app closest to Instagram is called BeFunky, with a cute interface and very similar navigation, and about a dozen filter effects, with the promise of more after upgrading to a pro account. It was also fast and easy to take a perfectly mundane photo and make it look fairly cool. The only downside is sharing the photo — BeFunky limits the share to Flickr, your phone’s gallery, BeFunky’s database or Facebook. Once it is in the gallery, it can be shared additional ways, but the extra step is annoying.

So which of the apps was the winner? It really depends on use. While I really liked BeFunky, the limited sharing was a bit too hard to take, so my personal favorite is Pixlr-o-matic. But considering Instagram has confirmed that it’s working on an Android version (and recent rumors say it is close to completion), I will soon be able to test drive the real thing.

Data journalism can be very compelling. Stitched with a good narrative, it can tell one amazing story. But we can do better than that. We can also visualize the data and provide a great package. With that in mind, here are three free options for creating animated and interactive charts.

Google charts API

Google offers great, free and easy chart building tools. There are 14 different types of visualizations in all to choose from, including bar charts, bubble charts, treemaps, gauges and tables.

The charts can be made interactive or static and used in print as well as online. Google also provides a quick start guide so designers can get up and running. All the code is included — just modify it to suit your needs.

Google tries to make this very simple and accessible. Even if your knowledge of HTML and JavaScript is limited, you should be able to use Google charts easily.

JIT

The JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit is a JavaScript library that includes code for area, bar and pie charts, sunburst charts, icicle charts, force directed graphs and tree maps.

The data for the charts is created in JSON. To get the visualization to appear, just attach the .js file with the JSON in it to your page along with the core files. Create a div for the visualization and you’re done.

The project’s documentation is easy to understand and does a great job explaining how to quickly make charts of your own. Some understanding of coding is required.

The project uses an open source license (BSD), so you should be able to use it on your website for free.

^{A treemap visualizing the 2012-13 Alberta budget. Made with with JIT.}

Edmontonjournal.com used this library last week during the Alberta budget lockup to create a treemap of the 2012-13 budget.

d3.js

For the more advanced designer, there is the d3.js library. Created in 2010 by Michael Bostock, it’s free for designers to use on their sites.

The library can be used to create calendar charts, chord diagrams, choropleth maps, non-contiguous cartograms, treemaps and much more.

This library is a bit more complicated to use, but also much more powerful. It can be the backbone of a major data visualization.

^{The New York Times’ budget breakdown visualization created by Shan Carter using d3.js.}

Shan Carter of the New York Times recently created an incredible budget visualization using the d3.js library.

Conclusion

Regardless of which library or method you use to create visualizations, remember the journalism. Great-looking charts that don’t convey much aren’t very useful. Technology is wonderful, but always be mindful of whether it’s helping you get the message right.

Do you use other methods or libraries to create interactive? Let me know in the comments.

City noise fills the street as you wait in line for a small box of food. An argument breaks out over the last of the food distributions. A man collapses right in front of you, and you stand there suspended in time. You can’t do a thing to help.

Created by Nonny de la Peña, “Hunger in Los Angeles” is a 3D retelling of a scene outside of a Los Angeles food bank housed in a church. It’s the kind of scene we read about every day in newspapers, but the virtual audio and visual put you right into the world, seemingly while it is happening.

USC Annenberg describes the project:

De la Peña’s six-and-a-half minute interactive news piece allows one user at a time to enter a virtual reality, gaming-style environment set in the midst of a food bank distribution line located outside the First Unitarian Church, on 8th Street in Los Angeles.

During the eventful – and non-fiction – segment, chaos occurs when someone tries to steal food. A man in line falls to the ground in a diabetic coma. An ambulance and two paramedics arrive to assist.

The piece, like de la Pena’s other works and writing, explores the difference between the objective and the subjective, and re-imagines modes of creating and delivering contemporary journalism.

“Hunger” was crafted in part by using video game development and 3-D platform software, a head-mounted display and an audio recording made in 2009 by a student intern as part of the USC Annenberg journalism professor Sandy Tolan-led effort, “Hunger in the Golden State.”

Entering the experience is slightly disorienting; after slipping a backpack full of wires over your shoulders, your ears are encased in headphones and your eyes are covered by a visor. Then the simulation starts, as you stand in line with a group of digital people.

As a gamer, the first instinct I have in a virtual environment is to try to run, which was impossible given the constraints of the space. The second instinct was to look for some kind of objective, which is not the point of a simulation. The virtual reality part can be strange — there are in-world objects like curbs, cars and walls that do not provide the feeling one would expect. I also found myself trying to game the simulation, trying to separate my eyes from the visor, so I could have a better idea of where I was in the real world.

It’s clearly engaging. During the demonstration, someone nearly crashed into a wall. (I nearly did the same thing, despite the handler that follows you with the gear.) At points during the simulation, I crawled, put my hands through walls, knelt down to look at people on the ground and attempted to jump through walls. When the simulation ended, the action paused and an infographic lit up the screen.

After taking off the gear (and reorienting myself to reality, which took about two minutes), I interviewed de la Peña about the project, her team and what the future of journalism could feel like.

How did you come up with this project?

I started [my career in journalism] as correspondent for Newsweek, then I left that to do a documentary film. I always loved technology, but felt like I couldn’t do robust narrative issues with the platforms that existed. So I worked on a film called “Unconstitutional,” about post-9/11 civil rights abuses. Then I got a grant to create a virtual version of Guantanamo Bay prison. After we made that, I can remember the moment in my back yard where I thought “Holy shit, this is applicable to all journalism.” So, then I started thinking about spatial narratives, and what you call the “embodied edit” — there’s so much research about people and their connection to their virtual avatar. So how do you create a space where people have agency but are still acting within the space of the narrative?

[This is what we did in the Guantanamo project], you were placed in the body of the detainee. After planning out the project, we recorded audio and got actors to read the [Mohammad Al-] Qhatani [interrogation] transcripts, and in that project, you just were in it. [Participants] would hear [the interrogation] through the wall, and you could see yourself in a mirror and people reported feeling as if they were in that kneeling, tied position.

I was a research fellow at the University of Southern California J-School, so there was a class being run by Sandy Tollen, about Hunger in the Golden State, [and the question was] how do you put people in this [experience]? You can’t make people feel hungry, but you can put them in the scene, so what’s the moment when the food runs out at the food bank. That’s what I thought I would do, but people kind of went silent at that moment.

I knew that from previous [projects] that if the audio isn’t great, you cannot trick the mind. My intern had just recorded this whole scene (at the church), so I said “that’s what we’re going to build.” That was a year and a half ago, then I joined a working group. The first prototype kinda worked, but after I kept asking Bradley Newman, the Lead Artist and Programmer on the project how to code things he got involved and became my lead artist on it. As we built it, we also started thinking about how to have a linear narrative. We decided it needed to have some kind of content at the end, so we came up with this visual idea and found a way to do it that was kind of cool.

People have whipped out their cellphones while in the simulation, and have tried to comfort people. Kids are funny, as they will look at [the virtual] adults to figure out what to do.

Can you walk me through the technology?

We started with a zoom microphone recording the scenes on the street. We didn’t do a lot of spatial sound redevelopment. [The visuals] were built in Unity 3D. I did the first version with some javascript; Bradley took over in C#. The cool thing about building in Unity, you can spit it out on the Kinect camera — you don’t even need the Xbox, you can view it on your laptop. The Kinect experience [for the Hunger project] is a bit tough because we don’t have the gestures right yet.

What were the challenges with building this project?

We had to make some hard choices, editorially. That guy [who has a seizure] — he actually does get revived, and manages to leave. But we didn’t have the money and time to code all that so it became an editing decision. I didn’t realize how much that would impact people, not knowing how the man’s story would resolve. A woman had a personal experience like that with someone with diabetes, and she came out of the experience crying.

Also, the usual problems with space, time and finding enough interns.

How much did all of this cost to put together?

I spent about $700 of my own money. It’s just the components, the motion sensor system. Unity 3D is open source. My guess is you could do this, depending on skill level and team, for about that.

Why do you think immersive experiences are important to the future of journalism?

I have no doubt that this is the future of journalism. We need to establish best practices. The power of this stuff is so huge, we need to be thinking about what our responsibility is as journalists, what decisions are we making. I certainly learned a huge lesson here.

ONA12 Session Selector open
We know you have ideas for sessions at the 2012 Online News Association Conference & Awards Banquet, Sept. 20-22, in San Francisco. Good news: Our Session Selector is now open and you’re officially invited to submit session proposals for consideration in the ONA12 program or apply to be a speaker. Deadline for session proposals is March 1, deadline for speaker applications is March 27.

Innovate your election coverage with first ONAvation webinar
Learn about the trends and tools that can help you add color and depth to your election coverage in Innovative Social Tools for Covering the 2012 Election, the latest ONAvation webinar with Poynter’s News University, and the first for 2012. Join Phoebe Connelly, a senior editor at Yahoo! News, where she works on crowd sourcing, emerging reporting technology and the social web, for this one-hour webinar on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2 p.m. ET. ONA members price: $9.95. Non-member price: $29.95. Not a member? Join here.

Don’t forget about the discounts ONA members receive on all NewsU’s digital and in-person seminars. Members can grab promo codes here. See NewsU’s complete list of upcoming webinars.

We’re hiring!
Work with us! We’re hiring a full-time, tech-minded business development and sales manager to drive revenue and sponsorships for ONA, a fast-growing nonprofit 501 (c)(3). See the full job description here.

ONACamp: Free digital training set for Montana
Save the Date for ONACamp Montana, April 13, at the University of Montana in Missoula. ONACamps are free, all-day, intensive digital journalism training sessions, courtesy of a grant from the Gannett Foundation. If you’re in the area and interested in attending, help us create programming specific to your needs by completing this survey. More info on ONACamps here.

ONA Local upcoming events

ONA Gainesville just launched! If you’re in the Gainesville area, meet up with others interested in digital journalism and ONA by joining the group. You can find them on Meetup here.

ONA Local Penn State-State College will host a Skype chat Feb. 15 with Amy Webb, head of WebbMedia and ONA Board member, on social media strategy, upcoming hot sites and how she uses Twitter. There’s still space, so RSVP on Meetup.

ONA NYC hosts a special meet-up Feb. 15 for Social Media Week. Heather Murphy, Photo Editor at Slate, will moderate James Estrin, Staff Photographer for the New York Times; Paul Moakley, Deputy Photo Editor at TIME; Anthony Quintano, Sr., Community Manager, NBC News; Janis Krums, Co-Founder of Elementz Nutrition and Jim Collins, New York Photo Desk Manager, AP, as they discuss the shifting lens of photography in the digital age. RSVP on Meetup.

ONA @ Mizzou hosts a mobile brown bag Feb. 17 to discuss mobile advertising, mobile-first publishing strategies and job hunting. Amanda Bromwich and Matt Schmertz, 2011 convergence graduates, will talk about their jobs at The Marketing Arm, a Dallas-based marketing agency.

ONA Austin will discuss broadcast and new media Feb. 27 with: Sara Talbert, reporter for Fox Austin, Michael Spurlin, producer for MyFoxAustin.com; Rebekah Hood, web editor for KVUE.com; Nick Blackhall, web editor for KVUE.com, and Dale Blasingame, a former producer who studied broadcast journalism’s use of new media for his Master’s at Texas State University. RSVP on Meetup.

ONA DC welcomes LegiStorm’s Founder and President Jock Friedly, who will demonstrate the site’s new premium Pro product, which brings together data on members of Congress and their staffs. More information on Meetup.

Let your heroes shine for Sunshine Week

Sunshine Week is March 11-17. Here are a few ways you can show your support:

• Nominate a Local Hero (or two) for 2012 until Feb. 20. Nomination forms are here.
• Send your Sunshine Week event information including, date, location, topic and URL (or email address for more information/registration) to be added to the Sunshine Week calendar to dghernandez@rcfp.org.
• Every year in the Toolkit, Sunshine Week offers free materials to participants, including a variety of opinion columns for use by all publishers. If you would like to have something from your organization included, send it to dghernandez@rcfp.org.

Fellowships, grants and awards

Knight News Challenge 2.0 to open
The Knight Foundation has announced the details of the revamped Knight News Challenge, offering funding for the best new innovations that digitally inform and engage communities. For the first time, the challenge will be offered three times this year, in short, more focused rounds, as a way to better mirror the pace of innovation. Themed “Networks,” round one, is the search for ideas that leverage and maximize the impact of the best existing media platforms to convey news and information. Applications for funding for the first challenge will be accepted Feb. 27-March 17. Read more about it on KnightBlog.org.

International Reporting Project Fellowships
The International Reporting Project from The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University is offering nine-week fellowships for reporters interested in international religion topics. Up to four reporting fellowships will be awarded for fall 2012 to U.S. journalists with proposals on important global religion stories—no matter where in the world they might be or no matter what religion(s) they are about. Learn more and apply for a fellowship by Monday, April 2.

2012 Women Entrepreneurs in the Digital News Frontier
The International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) is now accepting applications for the 2012 Women Entrepreneurs in the Digital News Frontier Grant Program, awarding three $20,000 grants to entrepreneurial women journalists proposing to use digital media in new ways to deliver the news. Deadline for applications is March 2. More information and apply here.

IWMF also is accepting nominations for the Courage in Journalism Awards, which honor female journalists who have shown extraordinary strength of character while working under difficult or dangerous circumstances. Nominations will be accepted until March 2. Nominate a journalist here.

• Salon sees a huge boost in traffic while publishing less.
• Lauren Wolf notes that no one is telling male reporters to stay home.
• The New York Times reports that street photographers are facing challenges shooting.

• Established media companies respond to “Occupy” newspapers.
• Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would allow television coverage in the Supreme Court, if approved by the full Senate.

To share an issue or join the conversation, submit your own post, reblog on your own Tumblr or comment on a post.

I don’t have average days. But in general, crack of dawn (4:30) and late evenings (past midnight) are set aside for the blog and freelance business. Days are handling media calls, speaking to reporters on AOPA issues, overseeing AOPA’s social media accounts and learning to fly.

Why did you choose to get involved with online media?

My previous company (Aviation Week) back in 2006 told us the future was online, and that we needed to get with it. I’m an old-school print journalist (my first job had me on an electric typewriter) that transformed. Online media and all the associated tools and tech made me excited about my career again!

As the “Aviation Queen” how did you manage to blend your love of the skies with journalism?

I cannot believe that I’ve been paid for my hobby these past 20 years. I’ve been an avgeek since my first plane ride at the age of 6, and in 1992, I was finally able to parlay that into a writing/communications career. A small note: I didn’t come up with the name Aviation Queen – it was given to me by my industry.

You also work as the chair of NABJ’s Digital Task Force – what challenges do you see journalists facing as they enter or transition their careers? What are the most common pitfalls, and how can they avoid them?

Amazingly enough, I see a lot of journalists who are still reluctant to make the transition. They insist on clinging to the old ways under a business model that continues to crumble and layoffs continue to happen. DJTF has worked hard to help NABJ members and others to embrace the change by showing them where the training is and how to use the latest tools and technology. Most importantly, we want to show people they don’t have to be scared of these changes, but they’re going to have to do them if they want to continue their journalism careers.

One big pitfall I see is people getting too overwhelmed trying to do too much, and not understanding the true reach of social media. Folks need to take advantage of the training available out there. There’s plenty of free and low-cost options, but to be really effective, you’re going to have to invest in yourself.

The Roland Martin-Twitter controversy continues to make waves, particularly as journalists try to figure out what is appropriate online. You already gave your advice to journalists – but how would you advise CNN to update their social media policy, to help eliminate some of the confusion?

When I was at Aviation Week, I was one of four charter members that helped create parent company McGraw Hill’s social media policy. We had members from across all the company units, and we shared best practices and crafted a policy that worked for everyone and made sense. At this day and age, media outlets should have a policy in place, but most of it, really, is just common sense.

Recently, you were laid off from a long-time position, but managed to prosper. What tips do you have for journalists who may be facing a pink slip?

Tip one: keep your resume updated, even if you’re happy in your current job.
Tip two: keep a copy of it in the cloud; the day I was laid off, I was able to send my resume to four people on my train ride home. Tip three: always nurture your network. Thanks to my 20+ year network, I haven’t actually applied for a job since 1992. And my network didn’t fail me this time, because I was laid off on Oct. 4; by the end of the month, I had three great job offers.
Tip four: DO NOT WALLOW over the loss. That’s time you could be spending emailing/calling your network, looking for job tips and seeing what opportunities are out there. I created a nice freelance business because after it got out I had been laid off, folks who have known me for years came out of the woodwork to offer me assignments.

If you had a million dollars dedicated to improving media, you would…
Create a fund that would offer solid multimedia training via associations and organizations like ONA or Poynter for mid- to late-career journalists of color.

Our Session Selector is now open and you’re invited to submit session proposals for consideration in the ONA12 program. Submissions will be accepted through March 1. Then, from March 6 to March 29, the ONA community will vote and comment on sessions they’d like to see.

This year, there are two ways to offer your expertise at ONA12:

• If you have a session you’d like to suggest for the conference, take a look at the submission form and send us your best idea.

• If you have expertise to share with the digital journalism community and you’d like to speak at the conference, you can fill out the speaker application. As we put the program together, we may contact you.

Ideas from the community, along with input from the ONA12 conference committee, ONA staff and a member of the Board of Directors, will help the program committee create the sessions for ONA12.

If you have questions about the Session Selector or the ONA12 programming, email ONA12program@journalists.org. If you have any general questions about the conference, email ONA12@journalists.org.

As always, we look forward to seeing what you come up with.