The Drone Journalism Lab demos at ONA 2013, from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

The energy of optimism crackled through the conference rooms at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis last week as members of the Online News Association gathered for the professional group’s annual conference.

The conference, held Oct. 17-19, assembled plenty of talent and ideas from the leading edge of innovation to make the point that journalism has a bright future.

Knight Foundation announced two major initiatives at the conference and hosted office hours for several information projects that it sponsors.

The biggest news from Knight was the investment of $4 million in Knight-Mozilla OpenNews so that the organization, which connects technologists with newsrooms, can expand its work. The grant will allow OpenNews to increase the number of fellows who work with journalism organizations, hold collaborative “Code Convenings,” and expand its Source Web community, including hosting an annual conference.

Michael Maness, Knight vice president for journalism and media innovation, talked about the work during a panel with Dan Sinker, director of OpenNews, on “Open Source in the Newsroom.” Maness said the efforts are intended to foster change in newsroom culture and produce work that better serves the information needs of communities.

“Because of the fact we look at it as an adjunct to democracy and free speech issues we want that software to be available for people,” Maness said during the session. He added that the end result has “the potential to be better than something you would do in a closed system.”

Sinker said some newsrooms are successfully collaborating, but “there are other ones that are still thinking of the code they are making as a competitive advantage.”

However, “it’s a folly to think that anyone is making a news consumer decision by saying, I really like this news organization because they have an amazing backend database,” he said. “It’s the reporting that you’re doing that’s unique to your newsroom and the work that you’re putting into that side of things.”

Newsrooms weren’t the only places being urged to shift attitudes, however. Knight Foundation debuted a new digital book by its senior adviser to the president, Eric Newton, that advocates a revolution in journalism education. “Searchlights and Sunglasses: Field Notes From the Digital Age” instantly made other texts seem outdated, with its responsive Web experience developed by Knight Creative Director Eric Schoenborn and Web designer Chris Rosenthal. 

The book is a survey of Newton’s long career in journalism, with a “learning layer” developed in conjunction with the Reynolds Journalism Institute for guiding lessons in the classroom. PBS MediaShift plans to use “Searchlights” to stimulate conversation around journalism education reform and will revamp its EducationShift section; introduce a new Facebook page; hold convenings on the topic; and encourage discussion on Twitter using #edshift. 

Newton challenged educators to change their focus during a lightning talk on the midway, office hours in Knight Village and a “Hack the Curriculum” workshop where he asked that participants brainstorm on what j-school curriculums in the digital age should look like.

“If you teach journalism as a trade it’s a trade,” Newton told the group. “If you teach it as an intellectually challenging line of thought and work … then that’s what it is.”

Knight and three partners—the Excellence and Ethics in Journalism Foundation, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation and the Democracy Fund—also announced a new $1 million contest that will support the “teaching hospital’ model of journalism that Newton advocates. The Challenge Fund for Innovation Journalism Education will support 15 to 25 ideas during the next two years where college students will create real-world news projects with professionals, professors and researchers. The Online News Association will manage the contest, which will award micro-grants of up to $35,000. The consortium said application details would be released in November.

On the conference midway—a showcase for information projects—startups, research centers, media companies and others demoed some of the latest tools and techniques taking advantage of the rapidly changing technical landscape and increased access to vast datasets.

Of course, there were plenty of elements of fun, too. University of Nebraska Professor Matt Waite attracted crowds on the midway whenever he unpacked his quadcopter drone and buzzed the crystal chandeliers. It wasn’t just a display of gee-whiz wizardry, though. Waite, who launched the Drone Journalism Lab at the university, a project supported by Knight Foundation, was demonstrating how the small craft can be used to help the media report the news.

In addition to the Drone Journalism Lab, several Knight-supported projects delivered lightning talks and held office hours on the midway. They included Census Reporter, the Center for Collaborative Journalism at Mercer University, Data Docs, GroundSource, Knight-Mozilla OpenNews, the Sunlight Foundation, the Tor Project, Videolicious, Watchup and WITNESS.

According to organizers, the conference even attracted its most diverse crowd of panelists ever, with women accounting for 50 percent of speakers and more than 30 percent being members of ethnic minority groups.

During a lightning panel for candidates for the 2014-2015 board of directors, Jim Brady, the president of the Online News Association, acknowledged how far the organization has come, both in developing its programming and diversity.

 “When I got on the board in 2005 the only diversity was that there were some bald men and some not bald men,” he said, adding that the current board reflects a spectrum of ideas and people.

That fact was also on display as the conference offered plenty of opportunities for attendees to informally network with a busy schedule of evening receptions, including major events co-sponsored by Knight, CNN, Disney, Google and Mozilla, which hosted its party in a maker space where goats stole the show.

For some, the highlight of the conference was the 2013 Online Journalism Awards, where news organizations from around the world were recognized for “excellence in digital journalism.”

Top honors went to The Boston Globe, which won the Knight Award for Public Service and a $5,000 prize, for its “68 Blocks” series about the many dimensions of a neighborhood known for its troubles. Judges said the Globe embedded journalists in the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood for a year and found “the soul of the community.”

The Online News Association also recognized The Texas Tribune, a news nonprofit that has received extensive support from Knight Foundation, for General Excellence in Online Journalism, Medium. The award carries a $3,000 prize.

Other organizations recognized by ONA that have received support from Knight Foundation included the Center for Investigative Reporting, which was honored for its veterans project, “Returning Home to Battle”; Nieman Journalism Lab, for Topical Reporting, Small; ProPublica, for its 2012 election coverage and its contributions to a “Frontline” investigative project, Big Money 2012; the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, for its Pulse of Oakland project; WNYC, for its Hurricane Sandy coverage; and Zeega, which provided the platform for a feature on the Black Gold Boom in North Dakota.

A full list of the awards and archives from some of the keynotes and sessions are available at journalists.org.

Michael D. Bolden, editorial director at Knight Foundation

ONA13 from Michael Bolden on Flickr.