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We’ve moved from AI panic to real potential: 5 trends and takeaways from ONA24

October 1, 2024

The Lenfest Institute’s Audience Community of Practice provides support for audience development professionals in journalism and media. Community member Lex Roman attended last month’s ONA Conference in Atlanta as part of the Audience Community of Practice. Here are some of her takeaways:

AI was the star at last month’s ONA24 Conference in Atlanta. We’re beyond the question of “should we use AI” and we’re now hashing out the “how” part.

I wasn’t surprised to see that there was an entire track of the conference dedicated to AI and emerging technology given that Silicon Valley investors have pumped $330 billion into about 26,000 AI startups since 2021. ONA24’s lineup demonstrated that (most of) the news industry has already processed and moved on from the panic that comes with a major technological advancement like AI. Instead, journalists came together in Atlanta to get tactical with how to adopt and integrate AI into their newsrooms.

If you’ve been to ONA before, you know the agenda is stacked so everyone has a different conference experience. Most of the sessions I attended were about audience growth, creator economy, and revenue.

Here’s five of the trends and takeaways I’m still thinking about from ONA24.

AI just might make your life better

“Given that we spend an average of two hours a day in email, it’s worth exploring whether your email workflow is efficient or not.”

Jeremy Caplan, the director of teaching and learning at CUNY’s Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, said this at his delightful presentation on 24+ Wonder Tools (also the name of his popular newsletter). Most of the tools he shared incorporated AI in some way. For example, he highlighted the email tool, Shortwave, which can draft emails in your voice or summarize details from a long message.

Caplan also teamed up with AI-powered search engine Perplexity and the data viz tool Flourish to offer live demos of how AI can actually work in your day-to-day reporting.

A few examples he gave of AI improvements to your workflow:

Using Claude to get feedback on your writing
Generating videos in your own style with Hypernatural
Saving notes quickly and being able to recall them easily with Lazy
Cleaning up data with ChatGPT before uploading to Flourish
Uploading your research to Perplexity to have it summarize or categorize

In other sessions, newsroom leaders discussed how they were positioning AI inside their organizations. Notable topics included what risks to watch out for, how to encourage your team to adopt new tools, and what kinds of AI experiments to try first.

Nikita Roy gave a much talked about presentation on ethical use of generative AI and pointed out that “AI literacy must be a priority” for journalists.

Roy is a generative AI specialist and host of the Newsroom Robots podcast (which is about AI and journalism). She noted on LinkedIn that more than 20% of her attendees in the room had never used ChatGPT, a gap she’s rapidly closing with her AI education and evangelism.

If your ears are perking up, Roy and Caplan are teaching a Generative AI for Media Professionals course this November that you can enroll in now.

Bypass the algorithms with… community events?

On the flip side of automation, we have good old fashioned human connection.

I attended two great panels about in-person community engagement as a way to figure out coverage that matters, grow your audience, and develop new revenue streams.

Stephanie Toone, community engagement editor from Canopy Atlanta talked about their canvassing and coffee shop discussions around specific neighborhoods in Atlanta. Canopy Atlanta has a community-first mission around local news that is both informed by its audience so this work is not an afterthought, it’s designed into their operating model.

I also went to a panel on holding profitable community events with consulting firm Blue Engine Collaborative; the Jackson Advocate, which serves Black audiences in Mississippi; and Hy-Lo News, a startup focused on Black and Brown millennials in South Florida. They shared several examples of events they’ve hosted for their audiences, pulling in relevant community organizations and local brands to contribute money, event space, and promotion.

Idalmy Carrera-Colucci, Blue Engine Collaborative’s chief of staff, recommended newsrooms that are experimenting with events start with virtual events to validate audience interests and marketing channels in a lower cost setting and work toward live events. Once you go in person, aim for break even first and then, work toward cash flow positive.

Another tip she had was to promote and sell events to groups (rather than individuals) by selling bundles of tickets and approaching organizations directly.

Offline community engagement may be messier and less formulaic than online work, but the newsrooms who presented on these panels definitely make it sound rewarding.

The news lives everywhere

Even as social news consumption habits are changing, news organizations should continue to work to meet their readers in spaces where they’re already spending time online.

Erica Hernandez, CNN’s senior producer for programming and distribution, talked about CNN’s audience-facing WhatsApp group, which has 15 million people in it. The newsroom takes its TikToks and drops them into the channel, and the team doesn’t expect that that audience will always visit the website to read articles.

Lance Dixon, Audience Engagement for The 19th, echoed that, saying that they often break stories on social media first and if the audience engages with it, then they’ll share the full story on their website.

We also heard about the growing popularity of Reddit from audience professionals as an untapped growth channel. Other social media like Facebook, TikTok, X and LinkedIn are already flooded with promotions from all types of businesses but Reddit has avoided being a promotional hub, which offers news outlets a clear place to land with compelling stories that could kick off discussions.

There were also several sessions and vendors highlighting the importance of email newsletters, which are absolutely hogging all the spotlight across the digital marketing industry right now as social platforms have de-emphasized news.

Tech companies are keeping their eyes on journalism

The ONA schedule was filled with tech companies either doubling down on the news industry or breaking into it. Longtime giants like Microsoft, YouTube, Reddit took the stage while smaller companies like News Revenue Hub, Parse.ly and Letterhead led workshops and trainings.

I spent a lot of time on “Startup Alley” where news startups launch at ONA and I chatted with news entrepreneurs throughout the conference. Tools like the newsletter analytics tool Glueletter, SEO slack tool YESEO, expert source finder Featured, and election data viz platform Populist are prioritizing the news market.

Journalists have an opportunity to shape both which startups launch and how these startups deliver what is actually needed and many of these companies are coming to the table ready to collaborate.

The movement of journalists becoming their own boss is growing

While the industry faces shutdowns and layoffs, there’s a hopeful wave of independent journalists developing their own channels and publications.

This movement was well represented at ONA24 with an application-only workshop on “Going Solo” and a session held by YouTube on becoming a “news creator.”

I ran into Matt Kiser of WTFJHT and Caitlin Dewey of Links I would Gchat you if we were friends, both journalist entrepreneurs who run newsletters. I also met Ashlyn Lipori-Russie who created Ask Ashlyn, a personalized news texting service for news avoiders.

They all make the economics work for them in different ways that make sense for their publication and their audience. Kiser works full time on his newsletter thanks to reader subscriptions; Dewey splits her time between her newsletter business, teaching, and freelance journalism; and Lipori-Russie is building Ask Ashlyn while also having a full time job. The three of them highlight different paths individual journalists can be taking with their careers.

Author and science journalist Katherine Reynolds Lewis convened a freelancers meetup after giving a jam-packed talk on how news organizations can be better clients for freelancers. The freelancers who came out were interested in a range of entrepreneurial endeavors like becoming their own video producer, starting their own podcast, and of course, launching their own publication — to augment their freelancing work and possibly even as a full time venture.

Journalist-run ventures are a trend to watch for 2025.

ONA is about the people

The sessions were great but it’s the people that make ONA24 worth the trip.

Pretty much everyone I spoke with said the reason they fly across the country is to catch up with their colleagues from other outlets and to be in a room with “people who get me.”

On the last day of the conference, there was a workshop series on safety. I didn’t attend any of these sessions but I noticed a similar theme at SRCCON in Minneapolis last month. Journalists are wondering how to provide care to themselves and to others. It’s also worth exploring how these spaces could be created more frequently and more year round — particularly across newsrooms. (One year-round opportunity is The Lenfest Institute’s Audience Community of Practice, which brings together audience development news professionals from across the field. It’s free to join!)

We all left with a lot to consider and we have a lot of smart people to consider it with. The hope in the news industry is just that. People who see the light ahead of us working together on keeping it lit.

About Lex Roman

Lex Roman writes Journalists Pay Themselves, a newsletter about reader-funded journalism. Her background is in growth and monetization for tech and creative businesses. She’s based in Atlanta, GA and you can reach her at lexroman.com.