Join ONA and LION Publishers for a meetup for leaders of small independent news startup leaders and aspiring independent news organization founders. At this event you’ll meet up with founders and aspiring founders and swap ideas on a range of issues — including creating a business plan, generating revenue, and understanding your target audience’s needs — in a series of fast-paced breakout discussions. Bring an idea or two to share, and expect to leave with a bunch of new ideas from your peers, plus new professional opportunities, and peers, mentors and colleagues, or inspiration for a collaboration or partnership.
This event will be participatory — not a webinar — so expect to have the chance to contribute to the conversation throughout the 75 minutes we’re together. After a brief check-in, we’ll break into smaller groups to discuss a series of prompts, checking back in after each to share with the group. Then we’ll come back together for a short check-out and reflection.
Where will the meetup take place?
This event will be hosted on Zoom. For this particular event, you’ll have the best experience if you join via the Zoom app on a desktop or laptop computer so that you can see more participants in the gallery view.
You can also join by the mobile app and take advantage of the breakout rooms, although the number of participants you can see at one time may be more limited.
Can I dial in by phone?
We don’t recommend joining by phone dial-in, if possible, so that you can see all the breakout room options and contribute to the conversation more easily. If you’re unfamiliar with Zoom, we’ll have ONA staff on hand to troubleshoot, and we suggest checking out the Zoom support site for more help.
Do I have to be an ONA or LION Publishers member to attend this meetup?
No, there’s no membership requirement. Please feel free to share with others in your network, too.
Will this event be recorded?
We’ll follow Chatham House Rules for the event: in other words, attendees can use what they learn but will be asked to not share the person who originated it or their affiliation. Therefore, we will also not record this meetup to protect attendees’ privacy.
If you can’t make this event, we encourage you to register for ONA21, happening virtually June 22-25, 2021, and stay tuned for more networking events from ONA by subscribing to the ONA Weekly newsletter.
Will closed captioning be available?
We will make closed captioning available. Please let us know at registration if this would help you participate so that we can ensure it’s available in breakout rooms as well.
Can I suggest a discussion topic for the meetup?
Please do! At registration you’ll see an option to type in your own topic suggestion, and we encourage you to input other things you’d like to discuss there. We’ll do our best to cover it.