Battle for Community: Crowded, Competitive and Hyper-local
March 7 – March 8, 2011
Featured Discussion Leaders |
| Director of Community Engagement, TBD Session: Social Media |
 Jodi Gersh Social Media Manager, Gannett Company |
 Mary Glick Associate Director, American Press Institute |
 Steve Gunn Editor for Innovations and New Products, The Charlotte Observer Session: Community Outreach |
 Mandy Jenkins Social Media Producer, TBD Session: Social Media |
| Executive Director, J-Lab, University of Maryland Session: Networked Journalism |
 Mel Taylor Principal, Mel Taylor Media Session: What’s the Business Model? |
 Warren Webster President, Patch Media Session: In the Neighborhood |
The high-stakes war in local news is heating up. Established providers see themselves in competition with dozens of local producers, bloggers and news startups to serve audiences and businesses at the neighborhood level.
In this two-day program, you’ll learn how to develop the right team and content for sustaining your community franchise.
- Partner effectively with others in your community to position your organization as the “go-to” place for all things local.
- Hold your own with ventures that are now aggressively targeting local audiences.
- Use tech tools like location-aware content and social media to maximize community engagement.
- Implement a sales strategy that serves the needs of advertisers and provides a growing revenue stream that can sustain your journalism.
SESSIONS INCLUDE
- The Essentials of Community Outreach. Tips for enhancing the effectiveness and reach of local collaborations – from how to stage a successful community-building conference to providing basic journalism skills training for neighborhood correspondents.
- Driving Community Engagement. Do you have a social media strategy? To succeed with today’s audience, you must be a player in the social sphere. Learn what it takes to be true community connector and make your content interactive with tools like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.
- Networked Journalism. Traditional news organizations around the country are working with hyperlocal news producers in their communities in a two-year-old Networked Journalism project organized by J-Lab. In this session, you’ll learn from the experiences of the many partners in this project – everything from how to recruit partners to how to maintain a sense of ownership of the network.
- What’s the Business Model? The answer to that question might be found right under our noses. Digital competitors like Groupon, Reach Local, and Google Places are grabbing ever larger amounts of local ad dollars. Other answers can be found by examining the revenue tactics of online-only publishers like Huffington Post, Gawker Media and Patch. Find out how all of these competitors are driving revenue and why the old rules may no longer apply.
- Coming to a Town Near You. Learn about the history and mission of AOL’s Patch, the challenges and opportunities of the online news and information model, and the ways in which traditional and digital media can work together within the ecosystems of the communities they serve.
- The Power of Place. The most effective mobile strategy will take advantage of what local media know best: connecting local people to local services in a way that benefits local businesses. In this session, you’ll explore the thinking behind two new pilot projects that use location-based mobile applications to provide a highly targeted marketing opportunity for retailers and heightened connectivity for users.
Who should attend: News producers and newsroom leaders in print and digital who are charged with strengthening local content and engaging their communities.
:: API’s Registration, Tuition and Hotel Policies
:: Special requirements for international members
Tuition: $995
Hotel/Meal Package: $500 (includes Internet and all hotel taxes).
This charge is in addition to the tuition fee.
Location: Reston, Virginia
