Arnie Robbins is the executive director of the American Society of News Editors, which Knight Foundation supports to establish long-term sustainability and advance excellence in journalism. Above: Neighborhood Explorer by The Dallas Morning News.

It’s not like there’s a great manual for this stuff. There’s not a rich tradition or history of what works and what doesn’t work.

It’s just crucial that we move as quickly as we can, learn as much as we can, and adopt a digital-first mentality as much as we can. Related Link 

“American Society of News Editors to help newsrooms adopt more digital tools and techniques with $85,000 from Knight Foundation ” – Press release (9/16/14)

Which is why, at the American Society of News Editors, we know that whatever we can do to hasten the speed at which news organizations adopt digital tools in newsrooms the better. Because we know that some of these digital tools will change as quickly as they are adopted. Some will work; some won’t.

It’s why we know that we must include a variety of tactics to help one another: from strong digitally focused sessions at large annual conventions to smaller conferences with a sharp focus on digital news and what works to webinars offering training on topics to our changing news landscape.

It’s why we experimented with our Hacking News Leadership conference in May at the University of Texas in Austin. By all accounts it was a terrific conference.  ASNE’s first regional conference in recent memory, Hacking News Leadership attracted more than 70 attendees from around the country, including editors, reporters, technology specialists, educators and other members of news organizations. 

With this success, we knew we could do more. It’s why we are so excited to receive this support from Knight Foundation, so we can create more regional conferences that benefit more journalists. With the hashtag #hackleaders, the Texas conference generated more than 700 tweets and was on the trending topic list. Some cool tweets below from the public: 

We showcased presentations, hands-on learning and sharing sessions, as well as two keynote speeches, that were all geared toward our goal of bringing news leaders and technology specialists together to forge a successful marriage.

Day One began with a series of eight short presentations of breakthrough projects that involved data journalism. We learned how the apps and stories were developed and how the presenters overcame obstacles. Here are links to some projects:

• Neighborhood Explorer by The Dallas Morning News
• Super Zips by The Washington Post
• Ethics Explorer by The Texas Tribune
• Fire Tracker by Southern California Public Radio
• WeatherVain by the University of Texas at Austin
• Ship Crash Map by the Houston Chronicle
• Lessons from Thunderdome by Digital First Media

We were blown away by the Saturday, May 2, lunch keynote speaker, Trei Brundrett, chief product officer for Vox Media. Covering the topic of “Battleship Cannons & Muscle Shoals,” Trei spoke about developing a digital deep cuts collaborative hit factory with design and technology. 

We wrapped up Day One with presentations, as well as quick shout-outs of easy technology tools that editors and developers can share in the newsroom. Here are links to each tool you can check out and share with your newsroom:

• Stacked Up (Do Philly students have the books they need?)
• Tabula (a Knight Prototype Fund winner that liberates data tables trapped inside PDF files)
• Invision, Marvel, Macaw (prototyping tools)
• Tableau (analyzing, visualizing and sharing information tool) 
• Evernote (clipping tool) 
• Storify (collecting media, publishing stories and sharing tool) 
• OpenRefine (free tool for working with messy data) 

Day Two was just as inspiring and energetic—from the breakfast keynote by Mark Stencel, digital fellow at The Poynter Institute, whose topic examined why digital tools are missing in most newsrooms—to Breakout Labs and Solution-Sharing. 

We’re really excited to do more, to learn more together and build on our collective success.