ONA teams up again with Poynter's NewsU for ONAvation webinars

The Online News Association, the world’s largest membership organization of digital journalists, renewed its partnership with The Poynter Institute’s News University (NewsU) to deliver a series of webinars in 2010 that focus on applying cutting-edge technology to journalism.

The four ONAvation webinars are free to ONA members and will combine the pioneering spirit of ONA’s membership with NewsU’s training expertise to show how developing technology can be used to aid and improve reporting, distribution and user engagement.

The first webinar in the series, "How Location-Based Services Are Changing the News," will be held Thursday, April 1, from 2 to 3 p.m. ET. The session will be led by Marshall Kirkpatrick, Vice President of Content Development and lead writer of ReadWriteWeb, one of the Internet’s top technology news blogs, also syndicated daily online by the New York Times.

Kirkpatrick will examine emerging social-local tools, from social networks to mobile and Web services that leverage a user's location. He'll explain how these services can help reporters and news organizations better serve their customers and why new companies that have been generating huge buzz in Silicon Valley are attracting newspaper interest. As he said in a recent review, "It was only a matter of time until 'where you are' became a platform to build added value on top of, just like 'who you know' has on social networking sites like Facebook."

The webinar is designed for online journalists who are looking for ways to use location-based data to provide context to their audience and mine data about these users.

To participate in the webinar, ONA members can pick up a promotion code at ONA’s Member Discounts page and register at www.newsu.org. Webinars are $27.95 for non-members. To become a member of ONA, join at Journalists.org.

Three other ONAvation webinars will be planned throughout the year, with dates to be announced. Archived ONAvation webinars from 2009 present expert sessions on the semantic web, mobile technology and data visualization, and are available for viewing by visiting www.newsu.org and typing "ONAvation” in the search box.

News University, the e-learning project of The Poynter Institute, offers more than 100 interactive, inexpensive journalism training modules. With more than 140,000 registered users, NewsU extends Poynter's mission as a school for journalists, future journalists and journalism educators.

For more information, contact:
Jane McDonnell, Executive Director
Online News Association
646-290-7900
director@journalists.org

Sherry Skalko
Editor, Journalists.org
312-881-6477
sskalko@journalists.org

Howard Finberg
Director, Interactive Learning
The Poynter Institute
727-553-4371
hfinberg@poynter.org