{"id":9343,"date":"2016-12-08T01:17:22","date_gmt":"2016-12-08T01:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/?p=9343"},"modified":"2016-12-15T23:45:33","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T23:45:33","slug":"staff-picks-jen-mizgata-on-audience-engagement-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/2016\/12\/08\/staff-picks-jen-mizgata-on-audience-engagement-events\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff picks: Jen Mizgata on audience engagement + events"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Conference time! As always, we&#8217;ll bring\u00a0together lots of smart and talented\u00a0people working on incredible projects. There are a number\u00a0of can&#8217;t-miss sessions for me this year, including the obvious:\u00a0a great selection of keynotes that range from <a href=\"http:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/sessions\/openingkeynote\/\">insights from Facebook&#8217;s\u00a0Product Director Fidji Simo<\/a> on how news organizations can work with the platform, an important talk about <a href=\"http:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/sessions\/fridaykeynote\/\" target=\"_blank\">inclusivity in newsrooms<\/a>\u00a0(thrilled to have Jose Antonio Vargas returning to our conference stage!), and an inside look at the <a href=\"http:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/sessions\/closingkeynote\/\" target=\"_blank\">rise and unknown future for\u00a0reported.ly<\/a>, an innovative and inspiring approach to breaking news. If you&#8217;re looking for me next week, I guarantee you can find me in the front row for all of those.<\/p>\n<p>But don&#8217;t let the keynotes be the only sessions you make it to next week. I know there are happy hours calling your name, but the most inspiring part of our conferences is hearing from journalists doing excellent work. Some of the sessions I am most excited for this year deal with audience engagement. I LOVE to think about how news organizations can\u00a0find meaningful ways to\u00a0reach people with news they care about, and this selection of sessions gives you a well-rounded look at innovative practices to take back to your newsroom.<\/p>\n<p>&lt;3 My can&#8217;t-miss sessions: &lt;3<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/sessions\/snapocalypse\/\" target=\"_blank\">Welcome to the Snapocalypse: Navigating, Surviving &#8230; and Thriving? &#8230; With Distributed Content<\/a>\u00a0If you&#8217;re interested in creating content for distributed platforms (SnapChat, Facebook Instant Articles, etc.) and want to learn how to measure success, don&#8217;t miss this one. It&#8217;s got four super-smart journalists from four very different outlets &#8212; reported.ly, CNN, ESPN and NowThis. I guarantee you&#8217;ll walk away with new ideas AND\u00a0smart things to say to the non-believers out there.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/sessions\/nicheproducts\/\" target=\"_blank\">Getting into the Weed: Launching a Successful Niche Digital Media Product<\/a>\u00a0Yes, this session is about what it&#8217;s like to report on marijuana in a state where it is legal. It is also about developing a relationship with new audiences through great coverage and real community engagement.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/sessions\/coralproject\/\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a0Do Audience Better: Lessons from 150 Newsrooms and a Year of Writing Code for The Coral Project<\/a>\u00a0Can I just put a bunch of praise hands emojis here instead of explaining in words how much I appreciate The Coral Project?\u00a0&#x1f64c; \u00a0Most well-known\u00a0for embracing the comment section and the communities that flourish around them, The Coral Project\u00a0creates tools that help journalists connect with people. Great ethos, great people, great tips for connecting with the people you want to reach.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/sessions\/livestream1\/\" target=\"_blank\">F* It, We&#8217;ll Do It Live: Workshopping The Hows &amp; Whys Of Live Stream Part I<\/a>\u00a0Oh, a workshop about Facebook Live? Yes, please. And a session that focuses on why <a href=\"http:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/sessions\/livestream2\/\" target=\"_blank\">live streaming<\/a> is so popular? Yep, there, too.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/sessions\/liveeventengagement\/\" target=\"_blank\">Engaging Audiences with Live \u201cHigh Def\u201d Journalism<\/a>\u00a0Events\u00a0provide a meaningful way to connect audiences with stories, as well as a range of revenue and engagement opportunities. We&#8217;ve been paying attention to the work Megan Finnerty has been doing at the Arizona Storytellers Project for years, and I&#8217;m so interested to hear more about how she scaled the project with Gannett.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Two bonus sessions that don&#8217;t deal exclusively with\u00a0<em>audience engagement and events\u00a0<\/em>but are of interest to everyone since they feature incredibly smart people on important topics:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/sessions\/raceandinclusion\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rethinking &#8216;Diversity&#8217;: How to Cover Race &amp; Inclusion<\/a>\u00a0(learn who is getting it right and how you can be sure your outlet does, too) and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/sessions\/failfest\/\" target=\"_blank\">Fail Fest 2016: I Failed, It Sucked, But Here\u2019s How I Bounced Back<\/a>\u00a0(hear from\u00a0top-level editors about the times their projects <em>really<\/em> didn&#8217;t work).<\/p>\n<p>These are just some of the sessions that will help you find ways to better connect to your audience.\u00a0I&#8217;m super-stoked this year that ONA is using Hearken to help us get feedback from our community in advance of the conference. If you have a question for a speaker, click through the session title from the ONA16 schedule\u00a0to send it in advance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conference time! As always, we&#8217;ll bring\u00a0together lots of smart and talented\u00a0people working on incredible projects. There are a number\u00a0of can&#8217;t-miss sessions for me this year, including the obvious:\u00a0a great selection of keynotes that range from insights from Facebook&#8217;s\u00a0Product Director Fidji Simo on how news organizations can work with the platform, an important talk about inclusivity [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"start_time":0,"end_time":0,"moderators":[],"hashtag":[],"soundcloud":[],"scribble":[],"viafoura":[],"youtube":[],"vimeo":[],"facebook":[],"trint":[],"slideshare":[],"livestream":[],"resources":[],"video_embed":[],"first_name":"","last_name":"","title":"","organization":"","website":"","twitter":"","_sponsor_url":"","_sponsor_tagline":"","_sponsor_level":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paaWsZ-2qH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9343"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9343"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10664,"href":"https:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9343\/revisions\/10664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ona16.journalists.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}