Pick your meetups; discounts, contests and grants

Interested in starting or re-energizing ONA meetups in your town, state or country? Get in touch with our new Community Engagement Manager, Jeanne Brooks, at jbrooks@journalists.org. And look for news on start-up events in Boston and New York.

New city alert: San Francisco hosts first ONA meetup
Welcome, Bay Area, to our growing meetup family. The first event for ONA-SF is set for Nov. 17 at The Bay Citizen, 126 Post St., Suite 500, in downtown San Francisco. Attendees can look forward to networking, light refreshments and remarks by Jonathan Weber, editor-in-chief of The Bay Citizen, a new non-profit news organization serving the nine counties of the Bay Area. The Bay Citizen covers civic news and culture, with its own reporting staff and a wide variety of partner arrangements. The website is at baycitizen.org, and the staff also produces print sections for the Bay Area edition of the New York Times on Friday and Sunday. RSVP at Meetup.com.

ONA-Seattle
Join us for free food from Marination Mobile and a cash bar for the Hacks/Hackers Seattle Kickoff sponsored by Patch, Thursday, November 11, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Havana in Capitol Hill. If you’re a journalist who cares about technology and the future of media, you should come. If you’re a technologist who cares about journalism and the future of media, you should come. Journalists call themselves "hacks,” someone who can churn out words in any situation. Hackers use the digital equivalent of duct tape to whip out code. Hacker-journalists try and bridge the two worlds, uniting potential collaborators for projects and new ventures. RSVP and get your free ticket at Eventbrite.

ONA-DC
They did it again, staging a packed pre-ONA10 meet-up in D.C. on Oct. 27. Up next: a discussion focusing on mobile news apps Thursday, Nov. 18, at 6:30 pm at Busboys & Poets (14th & V Street). Experts from Intridea, the creators of the popular News Reader apps, Mashable for iPad & Android; and Citizen Reporting apps, Oil Reporter for Android, iPad and iPhone, will discuss some case studies and answer questions from the group. Helping to sort through these questions will be Brendan Lim, director of mobile development at Intridea, and Julian Mellicovsky, mobile strategist. RSVP now at Meetup.com.

ONA-Italy
Italy is making grand strides in the New World with a strong ONA presence — on Saturday, Nov. 13th presenting "(Hyper)Local Digital Journalism: Let’s meet and talk about it,” hosted by the Digilab at Università La Sapienza, Rome. The event is open to all in the area: journalists, educators, citizen journalists, technologists and more. Morning sessions will showcase local Italian media presentations and the afternoon session will feature virtual presentations from domestic ONA experts: Sherry Skalko, Editorial Director, Midwest, for Patch; Anthony Moor, Lead Local Editor for Yahoo! Local, Bob Payne for the Seattle Times/Hyperlocal sites network and others. For more information (and to sign up), visit the wiki.

Facebook group for ONA profs/educators
A new members-only ONA group on Facebook welcomes people who have interest in all challenges and opportunities facing students, educators, professors and professionals invested in teaching the next generation of journalists. The idea is to experiment with creating a fertile, active members-only arena for sharing syallbi, equipment suggestions, research ideas, online storytelling challenges and successes, study results, digital award deadlines, intern issues -- anything of interest to professors and professionals who care about advancements and issues in the academy. Click here to join or send an email to ONA education chair Jody Brannon at jbrannon@journalists.org.

Wrap-Ups
ONA-Atlanta
ONA hosted its first event in Atlanta, courtesy of CNN: "The Art of Collaborative Storytelling,” which examined the changing nature of storytelling and newsgathering, including community participation. An audience of more than 70 people heard the discussion, moderated by CNN International anchor and correspondent Michael Holmes,joined by WonderRoot executive director and co-founder Chris Appleton, StoryCorps Atlanta site supervisor Amanda Plumb, and CNN.com participation director Lila King.

ONA-Seattle
Nearly 60 people showed up for the "You Are What You Tweet” event Wednesday, Sept. 15, at the Seattle Times, combining online, panel and audience conversations about the best ways for journalists to create, promote and manage their online brand. The virtual discussion was co-hosted on Twitter by the popular weekly wired journalists chat, #wjchat. The Seattle Times hosted the "brick and mortar" portion, where the crowd shared ideas with three panelists: Kirk LaPointe, Managing Editor of the Vancouver Sun in Vancouver, B.C.; Nancy Leson, food writer and blogger for The Seattle Times, and Mark Briggs, Director of Digital News, KING-TV (Seattle).

Discounts, deals, contests and grants
Discount on Poynter NewsU webinars
Get 30% off on webinars from Poynter's NewsU. Two upcoming seminars include Social Media Search: Maximizing Results on Nov. 18 and Track Your Traffic: Web Analytics for Journalists on Dec. 9. Head to the discounts page at journalists.org to get the promo code for each.

Get the Inside Scoop: Become a Newseum Press Pass member
ONA members who attended the recent Washington conference received complimentary tickets to the Newseum. Now the Newseum is inviting all ONA members and friends to become Press Pass members — or join the Newseum’s Friends of the First Amendment Society — by Dec. 1 to be eligible to attend a special Members’ Night reception and program on Dec. 6. Guests will get a behind-the-scenes look at some of the curators’ favorite artifacts not currently on display, coming from the Newseum’s "vaults” just for this evening. Membership benefits at this educational nonprofit include unlimited admission, priority seating at Newseum programs, discounts in the Newseum Store and Food Section and $5 off guest tickets. For more information and to join, visit the Newseum's site.

Nieman Reports in your hands
The new Nieman Reports launched at niemanreports.org and its print companion are in the hands of U.S. members of ONA. Featured topic of the Fall 2010 issue is "Reporting News From Faraway: Who Tells It and How?” Check out journalists.org for stories of particular interest to ONA members and all digital journalists. Feel free to send comments to NREditor@harvard.edu.

Knight Technology initiative
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation recently launched its "Technology for Engagement Initiative” — an effort to "help residents take action to strengthen their communities.” So far, $2.23 million will fund five projects, including one with a Facebook co-founder, and another involving Craigslist. For more details, go to knightdigitalmediacenter.org

Calling women entrepreneurs
If you missed Monday’s McCormick Foundation New Media Women Entrepreneurs Summit in Washington, D.C., you can catch the full video of the event at J-Lab, as well as a presentation from Placeblogger’s Lisa Williams and a keynote speech by Media Bistro’s Laurel Touby. You can also explore the research discussed by Maria Ivancin and J-Lab Director Jan Schaffer, in New Entrepreneurs: New Perspectives on News and New Voices: What Works.

Scripps Howard Awards
Online journalists may win from $10,000 to $15,000 in the 2010 Scripps Howard National Journalism Awards contest, sponsored by the Scripps Howard Foundation. Categories include breaking news, business and economics reporting, commentary, community journalism, editorial cartooning, environmental reporting, First Amendment, human interest, investigative reporting, photojournalism, public service reporting and Washington, D.C. reporting. Postmark deadline: Jan. 31, 2011. Entry forms are at scripps.com.

National Magazine Awards
The National Magazine Awards honor magazines, published in print and on digital platforms, that consistently demonstrate superior execution of editorial objectives, innovative techniques, noteworthy journalistic enterprise and imaginative art direction. The Awards for Digital Media will be held in conjunction with the MPA Digital Conference, presented at the Hilton New York on March 16, 2011. For deadlines and entry details, download this call for entries.