Poynter Announces ONAvations Webinar Series

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., March 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of its ongoing partnership with the Online News Association, The Poynter Institute's News University today announced the launch of the ONAvations Webinar Series. This four-part series is designed to help digital journalists better understand the emerging and expanding applications and technologies that are changing the way news is produced and delivered.

"One of the biggest challenges journalists face is staying ahead of the curve when it comes to using the latest tools and techniques," said Howard Finberg, director of interactive learning at The Poynter Institute. "This series provides the foundational skills individuals can apply to their own work."

"Each year, we look for the best and brightest for the ONAvations series to show journalists what's coming next," said Jane McDonnell, ONA executive director. "Our three-year partnership with NewsU means these trainings are not only expertly produced but remain affordable."

The NewsU ONAvation Webinar series is part of a larger training partnership between The Poynter Institute and the Online News Association that was announced in November 2010. This is the third year of the partnership between Poynter's NewsU and ONA.

The 2011 ONAvations Webinar series kicks off on March 30. Each Webinar is one-hour long and includes a question and answer session at the end.  The lineup includes:  

HTML5 Essentials for Content Creators [http://www.newsu.org/html5-essentials], March 30, 2011

Presenter: Luigi Montanez, Sunlight Foundation

The Web is changing. Browsers are getting more powerful. Mobile devices connected to the Web are more ubiquitous than desktop computers. All this innovation is being led by a set of open technologies known as HTML5. This Webinar will help you learn how to structure and present content for the Web using the HTML5. The presentation will guide you through HTML5 details such as tags, CSS 3, Web storage, WebSockets, Native video and audio, and WebGL and Canvas. You'll understand the meat and potatoes of HTML5 and how to apply it to your work.

Open APIs, Your Website and Your Content [www.newsu.org/using-API], June 2, 2011

Presenter: Zach Brand, Senior Director of Technical Strategy and Operation, NPR

Three years ago NPR became the first media company with a full content API when it launched the NPR API. Since then usage has grown to billions of stories delivered each month. It has greatly improved software development efficiency and directly contributed to NPR's ability to rapidly deploy across multiple platforms including iPhone, Android, Chrome and iPad. In this Webinar, you'll learn about the tools and practices that have made open content as important as open source to being efficient in a cross-media and trans-media world.

Describing Your Content: Metadata and What It's Good For [www.newsu.org/using-metadata], Aug. 2, 2011

Presenter: Eric Ulken, Assistant Managing Editor, Digital, The Seattle Times

It's no longer enough to write a story and post it on the web. To be most useful, your stories need to carry descriptive information that will help readers find them in a sea of available content – information such as publication date, geographic location and topics. This structured information, known as metadata, helps users filter content effectively and facilitates the publication of geographically relevant content to location-aware mobile apps, smarter related content and improved historical context on stories. In this Webinar, you'll learn the most useful types of metadata for news sites, how to add it to your content painlessly and how to leverage your content's existing metadata.  

Mobile Apps: Expanding Your Reach in the Modern Mobile Era [www.newsu.org/mobile-applications], Sept. 8 2011

Presenters: Lynn Smith, Shiny New Apps president and CEO, and Jason Barnett, Uptake.org executive director

What is the difference between mobile websites, mobile apps and mobile platforms? When is each most effective? Should your organization develop an iPhone app or iPad app, or plan for Android and other devices as well? In this session, we will address these questions and explore how mobile applications can help you reach your target audience in new, revenue-generating ways. In this Webinar we will look at the case study of the UpTake mobile app and touch on the issues and solutions around each part of the development cycle.

The cost of each Webinar is $29.95, but ONA members can attend at the discounted rate of $9.95. The ONAvations Webinar Series is just one of several initiatives to come out of the 2011 training partnership between ONA and The Poynter Institute. As part of the agreement, Poynter is also helping to promote and archive the Online Journalism Awards, while the ONA is contributing content to Poynter.org. ONA members also receive discounts on other Poynter training.

For more information on the partnership, visit http://about.poynter.org/about-us/press-room/poynter-and-online-news-association-announce-new-training-partnership.

About Poynter's News University

Poynter's News University (http://www.newsu.org) offers training to journalists, journalism students, teachers and the public through more than 200 interactive e-learning modules and other forms of training. It has more than 175,000 registered users in 225 countries.

The Poynter Institute trains journalism practitioners, media leaders, educators and citizens in the areas of online and multimedia, leadership and management, reporting, writing and editing, TV and radio, ethics and diversity, journalism education and visual journalism. Poynter's Web site, (http://www.poynter.org) is the dominant provider of journalism news, with a focus on business analysis and the opportunities and implications of technology.

About the Online News Association

The Online News Association is the world's largest association of online journalists. Founded in 1999, ONA's mission is to inspire innovation and excellence among journalists to better serve the public. The membership includes news writers, producers, designers, editors, bloggers, technologists, photographers and others who produce news for the Internet or other digital delivery systems, as well as academic members and others interested in the development of online journalism. ONA also administers the Online Journalism Awards.

SOURCE The Poynter Institute