Leaving the Marriott Marquis for dinner after the Online News Association conference in New York last Saturday night I was absolutely positively certain we should turn left to get to the restaurant. I was absolutely positively wrong -- the convivial Italian dining establishment where we had reservations was just a few steps to the right. Luckily, someone with a better sense of direction prevailed after a very brief detour; the only damage was to my ego.

Thinking back on the moment, which turned out to be a prelude to an energetic, often amusing evening, I realized that was what the whole conference was really all about -- people trying to find their way on increasingly familiar but still tricky turf, getting advice they don’t always take on how to do it better, learning from others while leading with their own strengths, venturing beyond their own boundaries.

		As interesting as this conference was, I?m convinced the high cost of registration and the expenses of a weekend in New York combined with travel time kept attendance from reaching a level that matches the interest.

For the better part of two days, nearly 200 journalists and others involved in the craft of online journalism narrowed their focus away from the distractions of the newsrooms and the computer screen and widened their horizons. Pats on the back were plentiful; the responses to the informal and the formal recognition in the form of the ONA Awards underscored the constant need for affirmation in a workplace environment where justification is part of the job description.

The comments as awards were accepted during a small Friday evening dinner often illustrated the theme of the conference, “Excellence Under Pressure.” “This is going to go a long way to helping us,” said MSNBC’s Robert Aglow as he gripped the acrylic award for “Creative Use of the Medium: Affiliated.” (The award acknowledged the site’s interactive airline security exercise, where users test their ability to screen luggage for dangerous items at real-time speeds. Slow down the line and the people in back start grumbling about the process taking too long.)
 
Expanded to ensure the inclusion of small operations, the list of finalists pulled a number of sites out of the clutter of the Web and put them squarely in the spotlight. From California and BeneciaNews.com to the Virgin Islands and St. Thomas Source to Village Soup and its coverage of coastal Maine, independents and sites with fewer than 200,000 visitors showed why bigger isn’t always better.

The ONA awards also recognize independent and affiliated sites separately providing even more opportunities for a variety of sites like the Gotham Gazette, cited for service journalism for its in-depth coverage of the efforts to rebuild New York. Finalist Danish site NewClearMedia was another eye-opener with its “The Enemy Within,” an examination of the war in Chechnya.

The most prolific winners were independent tech site CNET News, with three awards including general excellence and recognition for enterprise coverage of online banking and washingtonpost.com, which won general excellence for a large affiliated site and the enterprise award for its Blue Wall of Silence. Anyone who wants to see the difference between shovelware and a real news partnership should look at this compelling project, which made full use of the medium with Web-exclusive content while complementing and expanding on the print edition.

The list of finalists and the presentations during panels also demonstrated how easy it is to miss good work even when the site is well known and the user spends a hefty chunk of her waking hours online. ChicagoTribune.com’s interactive School Report Card faced stiff competition for the affiliated service journalism award. 

As much as the sites represented had in common the differences between them could be stark. In one panel, NYTimes.com director Ira Silberstein explained why projects that brought in only $60,000 might not be worth the production effort. During a later panel, Bill Marx, editor of the ONA finalist arts section of WBUR.org, said his freelance budget for the year was $60,000. That same amount that barely makes a ripple in the NYTimes.com budget allows Marx, a former longtime freelancer, to pay a top-market price in Boston of $300 a piece for fresh content several times a week.  (Be sure to check out the Artoons.)

Another finalist in the General Excellence in Online Journalism: Fewer than 200,000 visitors -- Affiliated, PackerInsider.com, was the revenue-generating hit of the conference. For an outlay of roughly $75,000, the Milwaukee Journal site has managed to bring in $500,000 in revenues by playing to the rabid Packer fan. As Patrick Stiegman, vice president and editor of Journal Interactive, described the 15,000 subscribers mostly signed up for annual subscriptions at $29.95, you could see editors in the audience trying to figure out if the fan base for any of the teams in their towns could support a similarly successful effort. Stiegman and a number of others charging for premium content mentioned a belief that they could increase the cost of their offerings significantly without damaging demand. 

The opening speaker represented in many respects the evolution of online journalism. Merrill Brown was one of the founding members of ONA as editor-in-chief of MSNBC.com, the online side of the General Electric/NBC-Microsoft news partnership. Now he’s the senior vice president for RealOne Services at Real Networks, responsible for subscription services offered in partnership with, among others, online news organizations. Brown handled the discontent with MSNBC management that influenced his decision to leave the site earlier this year between the lines, urging attendees “to not only innovate, but to press your bosses and their bosses to demonstrate the same patience the cable industry showed in building its array of services just a few years back.” He returned to that theme several times.

Brown also sounded more optimistic than he had when we spoke at length as he was leaving MSNBC: ” ... all studies show that our audience continues to grow, that revenues from both advertising and subscription products are growing, and that broadband expansion at work and adoption at home is rising dramatically.” Not too surprisingly given his new job, he spoke of the intersection of increased willingness for users to pay for some content and the spread of broadband access.  The full text is on ONA’s site.

Several of the panels I attended were more like dialogues as participants and panelists grappled with a range of concerns including the registration, walling off sites or parts of sites to subscribers, the integration of advertising without confusing users and, of course, ways to produce -- warning: buzzword ahead -- incremental revenue streams. An attendee from ColumbusDispatch.com was asked by a panelist to describe the response to the site’s switch to subscription only a few weeks ago. Too soon to gauge the real effect, he said, but he could warn anyone considering a similar change to keep customer service in mind.

One clear message: The niftiest packages, e-mail newsletters and in-depth coverage won’t be enough if your site isn’t relevant and tuned into the community it serves, however large or small.

Some presentations sent eyebrows flying up. At a Best of the Best panel, Dirck Halstead, founder of ONA Award-winning The Digital Journalist, mentioned the site’s practice of getting sponsorships from companies like Canon whose products are reviewed -- usually favorably -- on the site. “Reviews are generally looking at what we think will be helpful,” he explained. Halstead saw nothing wrong with the practice, explaining that a favorable review of a Nikon camera “got us in trouble with Canon” but showed credibility. Nikon is now a sponsor, too. While I greatly admire the site and have worked with some of those involved in it, I hope they will consider a different approach or at least provide better context to avoid the murky appearance. 

Despite the after-hours joke by one attendee that the topic tables for credibility and online ethics were the only ones with empty seats at the Saturday luncheon, I can report that the online ethics table was full by the time lunch started and that the discussion of both credibility and ethics was woven throughout the conference.

ONA has come a long way in three years. As interesting as this conference was, I’m convinced the high cost of registration -- $375 for members, $450 for non-members -- and the expenses of a weekend in New York combined with travel time kept attendance from reaching a level that matches the interest. Organizers mentioned options of Palo Alto, Los Angeles or Chicago for next year. A mid-America conference wins my vote as the one most likely to draw a bigger crowd. Whatever the location, holding the conference at a university -- Northwestern’s new Medill building sounds like a good solution for next year -- or other institution instead of a hotel should bring registration costs down to a far more manageable amount and offering hotel rooms that cost far less than $229 a night would do the same for travel expenses.  (As I type this an e-mail from ONA has just popped up on my screen asking for feedback using a Zoomerang survey.) 

No matter how good we are at communicating by e-mail or how lively a listserv can be, it’s not a substitute for getting together in person. One two-day conference can’t change the online journalism world but it can recharge our batteries or help us shift gears – and, if we do it right, we can bring much of it back to our colleagues who couldn’t attend and by extension to the users who come to our sites. The social conversations, the more formal discussions, even the Power Point presentations, can be invaluable tools in taking us all to the next level.

Staci D. Kramer is an associate member of ONA.