Online News Association cancels annual conference in "strategic shift"

I have some news to share about ONA’s new strategic shift.

Since we gathered in Chicago for ONA26, many of you have asked when we will be together again. Unfortunately, it will not be in 2027. ONA has decided to pause our in-person events and will not host a conference in 2027.

I want to explain why, and what happens next. First, though, I want to say what this community has meant to all of us.

In 1999, a group of journalists and technologists saw the internet as the future of journalism, years before many newsrooms were ready to agree. They built a community where the people doing this work could learn from one another and try new things together. That community became the Online News Association.

In the years since, this community has been where journalism’s biggest questions about technology were asked early and most honestly. Together, we moved through the early web and into social platforms, mobile, video, data and artificial intelligence, always asking what these changes mean for the people who report the news and the communities who depend on them. Through ONA, newsrooms of every size found a common language and a place to learn. And individuals who were building non-traditional paths within journalism and felt like outsiders, the “little green martians” of their newsrooms, as former board president Charo Henríquez described us, found others trying to solve the same problems, asking the same questions and wanting to try the same experiments.

For many years, the annual conference also sustained ONA’s work year-round. That is why the decision not to hold one in 2027 is one the Board and I have not made lightly.

Before the pandemic, the annual conference was ONA’s biggest source of revenue, and together with grants, it sustained the organization. This is no longer true. The costs of large convenings have climbed sharply while professional development and sponsorship budgets have shrunk. We worked to diversify our revenue, but the Board and I have reached the point where we must decide what ONA can continue and what it must pause.

This month, ONA’s long-time staff will leave the organization. Over many years, they carried this community, one conference, one program and one conversation at a time. I am grateful to them beyond what I can easily express here. I will continue to lead ONA as CEO and Executive Director, working with the Board of Directors, led by Andrew Fitzgerald, as we chart the path forward for the organization.