ONA Weekly #307

By on May 6, 2020

Recharge with your journalism peers

Here’s a reminder you might need right now: Exhale. Relax your shoulders if you can. We could all use more opportunities to recharge. To give you options, ONA Local groups are now offering virtual self-care sessions, ranging from meditation to discussion. Thanks to generous support from the Democracy Fund, they’re free and open to anyone — which means you don’t need to be in South Florida to tune in to tonight’s sound bath or near St. Louis to sign up for their upcoming virtual yoga retreat. Keep an eye on the Upcoming Events section of this newsletter for future offerings.

Add photogrammetry to your toolbox

Our Journalism 360 program recently launched a series of guides to producing immersive journalism, covering topics the community identified as priorities. The first is a Guide to Photogrammetry Photography by technologist Ben Kreimer, which provides step-by-step instructions for creating 3D models of structures, landscapes and objects. Join Ben for virtual Q&A on May 21, where he’ll answer questions about the guide and incorporating photogrammetry into your work.

Changes to OJA honors for video and engagement

Each year we reevaluate the Online Journalism Awards categories and make adjustments to reflect both how digital journalism is changing and feedback from our community. For 2020, we’ve added subcategories in Digital Video Storytelling that recognize Short, Medium and Long Format videos as well as Series. We’ve also reframed the Gather Award for Engaged Journalism to include a dedicated subcategory for Micro/Small Newsrooms, honoring the most creative engagement strategies by newsrooms with limited resources. Submissions are open now through June 4.

Of note: We highlighted a few of last year’s OJAs honorees on World Press Freedom Day; read the Twitter thread for inspiration on newsrooms’ impact on the communities they serve.

Mobilize support for journalism

It’s not too late to amplify and contribute to NewsMatch’s efforts to mobilize support for over 200 nonprofit newsrooms, part of the #GivingTuesdayNow coronavirus relief campaign. If you have the means, please also consider a donation to ONA to help sustain our mission to inspire innovation and excellence in digital journalism.

In response to the global lockdowns, we launched ONA Community Circles to virtually connect peers facing similar challenges, offered extensions to members experiencing financial hardship and developed the ongoing self-care series with ONA Local — and we’re currently designing even more virtual offerings, coming soon. Your support enables us to reach more journalists and newsrooms with resources for strengthening their relationship with their audience.

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Working from home? Make it count.

Learn how to interrogate, analyze and visualize data using Excel, SQL, Tableau and R to create persuasive data stories in the original data storytelling workshop. Three days, online: Boston University’s Data + Narrative Storytelling Workshop. June 2-4 and evenings starting September 14.

Upcoming events

ONA Local groups regularly host events for digital journalists all over the world. All events are now happening online. Find a group near you.

Career opportunities

ONA’s Career Center is an excellent resource for jobs, fellowships and internships in digital journalism. Recent postings include:

On our radar