Publish2, a two-year old startup of collaborative journalism tools, won $5,000 and the first Gannett Foundation Award for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism at the 10th annual awards ceremony. My Ballard, a hyperlocal site covering Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, won the first Community Collaboration award, while the Gotham Gazette was recognized for General Excellence, Micro Site, a new subcategory.

All three awards were introduced by the Online Journalism Awards committee this year to acknowledge the important role of emerging technology, the influence of the independent digital journalist and the growth of community reporting efforts.

“These honorees demonstrate the vitality and innovation of online journalists in a time of tumult and transformation in our industry,” said OJA Committee Co-Chair Anthony Moor, Deputy Manging Editor/Interactive of The Dallas Morning News. “We continue to be impressed by the way journalists are pushing the envelope and serving the public interest at the same time.”

ProPublica, LasVegasSun.com and The New York Times also won General Excellence Awards, which include a $3,000 cash prize, also courtesy of the Gannett Foundation.

The Chauncey Bailey Project, a collaboration of more than two dozen reporters, photographers and editors that investigated the death of the Oakland Post editor, won the Knight Award for Public Service and a $5,000 cash prize from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Launched in May 2000, the OJAs are administered by the Online News Association, in partnership with the University of Miami’s School of Communication.

Following are the winners, by category, with judges’ comments and links to the entries.

Knight Award for Public Service
The Chauncey Bailey Project
This entry required work within the community and led directly to the indictment of two men, an investigation of the Oakland Police Department and the resignation of the Chief of Police. The reporting is good and relentless under what were obviously and literally dangerous circumstances. The reporters didn’t shy away from exposing both criminals and police. The Chauncey Bailey Project is absolutely exemplary — a type of investigation that we wish more organizations could pursue. Its role is necessary, the reporting great.

Gannett Foundation Award for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism
Publish2
Publish2′s mission and unique tools encourage the spirit of open information and effectively fosters collaboration between teams of journalists and readers. Its link publishing widgets and easy-to-use in-browser tools are designed to fit cohesively into time-pressed journalists’ work days.

General Excellence in Online Journalism, Micro Site
Gotham Gazette
The site is exemplary in its thoroughness, comprehensiveness and the depth with which it explored the issues that are important to New Yorkers and New York. The quality of the games is impressive, as is the depth of interactive features it offers. Overall, it was a top-notch example of the trend toward hyperlocal coverage.

General Excellence in Online Journalism, Small Site
ProPublica
Here is a vision of what journalism can be as private enterprise fails to support it. ProPublica presents outstanding investigative work integrating original reporting with citizen journalism, graphic explanations and interactive tools. ProPublica helps other journalists do better work, too, by providing ideas, stories, data and tools. Very rich site, dense with information and a million ways to get into a story, from sortable databases to blogs, stories, graphics and photos. The inventive ways they parse and discover information using scraping, databasing and other web tools are great.

General Excellence in Online Journalism, Medium Site
LasVegasSun.com
One word kept springing to mind and that was meticulous. You click into the site and you see many things worthy of wonder. The home page changes all the time. They can do fairly sophisticated things with these stories. The details are good: related story links that are actually related. You sometimes slide your mouse of a photo and it becomes alive. They’ve done some amazing projects. They have loyal commentors. Their mobile site is remarkable as well.

General Excellence in Online Journalism, Large Site
nytimes.com, The New York Times
The New York Times stands above others. What I like about the way they use technology is that they are really thinking about their readers. The content is superb. The elegance of their photo editing stands out. In the digital area they are more innovative than others. IN terms of execution, in terms of content, in terns of just about everything you can think about, these guys hit it. When I consider general excellence I consider every department on that site. There’s no question about it to me, the New York Times comes out on top.

General Excellence in Online Journalism, Non-English, Small Site
Radio Azattyq, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Kazakh Service (Kazakhstan)
Good original journalism and tenacity of purpose marked out RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service as worthy winners of the non-English small site award.Both were in evidence when Kazazh authorities tried to ban a book critical of the President, threatening to punish anyone who even touched it.Radio Azattyq’s local site stood in defense of citizens’ rights to seek and receive information, and eventually forced the authorities to back down.

General Excellence in Online Journalism, Non-English, Large Site
SOITU.ES (Spain)
This Spanish site clinched the small site award last year, its first year of operation, and it continues to go from strength to strength.An underlying philosophy of sharing, linking and audience-focused engagement runs through its mix of original content and aggregated news and features material. Giveaway widgets, the ambitious flashinfo news panel and the elselector crowd-aided aggregation tool all get front-page billing.But the site is more than just these elements. It’s a work-in-progress, where core ideas come through as confident innovation and mesh with traditional journalism to create a fresh and distinctive package.

Breaking News, Small Site
Pressconnects.com/Press & Sun-Bulletin, Massacre on Front Street
This was clearly a huge story and they pounced on it. The interactive graphics showed what happened where and when. They did this very important story justice — as thorough as you could expect under the circumstances.

Breaking News, Medium Site
Knoxnews.com, Church Shooting
What Knoxnews.com put together in its first day of coverage of a church shooting was thorough breaking-news coverage at its best. The Web site’s reporting teams get online coverage. They merged text reporting with extensive video interviews of key individuals, the son of a victim and the neighbor of the suspected killer, among others.

Breaking News, Large Site
BBC News, Mumbai Attacks
A breaking news blog should be a one-stop shop and this was it. It quotes a lot of primary source information; there are comments in the hundreds on every single post. An unassuming-looking but engaging blog that covers many different things and covers it well.

Specialty Site Journalism, Small Site
Yale Environment 360
Such a well-done site. It has this great design and high-quality contributors. When you read the comments, you know the incredibly knowledgeable audience is totally engaged with the site. It’s a nice place to be and learn. Yale 360 does multiple things in parallel. It is news; it is opinion; it is community engagement. It is taking debate to a higher level and this is so needed in the journalism community now.

Specialty Site Journalism, Large Site
Military Times, Army Times Publishing Company
This site is cleanly designed and easy to navigate. It has a unique challenge in that it does serve a community, but not one with a geographic centre — the type of challenge for which the Internet is perfect. This is a virtual meeting place for people in the military, where they can catch up on news of professional and personal interest, exchange stories and advice, and honor their colleagues and their service. The special sites noted are quite well done, easy to navigate and full of specialized information that makes the overall site of even greater value to the reader.

Investigative Journalism, Small Site
The Chauncey Bailey Project
A tenacious and precise investigation of an institutional scandal that focuses on the murder of a journalist but explains much more about the community that created the conditions for his death. An exceptionally written and presented package. Strong photojournalism and timeline storytelling techniques. Outstanding ongoing effort two years hence.

Investigative Journalism, Large Site
Tom Lasseter and Matt Schofield, McClatchy, Guantanamo: Beyond the Law
Some real “gets” here with dramatic on the record stuff that we now know is true. It shows you the main characters, gives you some sense of the chronology and lets the reader see how they came to the conclusion they did. A fairly rich project and a hell of a job. One cannot write this story too much.

Multimedia Feature Presentation, Small Site
National Film Board of Canada, Waterlife
Gorgeous. Crazy good. Stunning. User experience is unlike anything we’ve seen. They threw in, in an organized way, the kitchen sink on this project and succeeded in presenting an innovative and informative look at the issue of water. There is multi-dimensional, multiple media story-telling going on here. Heads and tails above the rest.

Multimedia Feature Presentation, Medium Site
LasVegasSun.com, Quenching Las Vegas’ Thirst
There’s an awesome coordination between map points, graphics and video. That’s innovation. They built a heat map of residential water use that’s remarkable. Las Vegas put it all together.

Multimedia Feature Presentation, Large Site
Washington Post Digital, Sacred Ground: The Building of the Pentagon Memorial
Once you start exploring, it’s a great piece. It has depth because it lets you explore not only the site, but how it was planned, how it was built via interviews with the architects and a 3D walkthrough. It works very well at different levels. Excellent use of the technologies and the tools.

Online Topical Reporting/Blogging, Small Site
The Flame Trench, Florida Today’s Space Team Blog
These guys won for their space coverage last year — and it’s quite a bit better since then. They’ve added a blog along with live video and text coverage of events. And the site organizes, covers, filters it and links to the blog in a way that makes it meaningful.

Online Topical Reporting/Blogging, Large Site
NPR.org, Planet Money
Planet Money provided a distinct value to a community of readers at a time when clear reporting on the financial crisis was just vital. A lot of people were looking for and needed this information. The inaugural post that kicked off Planet Money was a feat of explanatory reporting. It stood out in an excellent field by the value it provided.

Online Commentary/Blogging, Small Site
No Award

Online Commentary/Blogging, Medium Site
Christopher Buckley, The Daily Beast
May have written the most important blog entry of 2008: “Sorry Dad, I’m voting for Obama.” One of the key moments of the U.S. Presidential campaign. This walked the fine line between commentary and traditional blogging. Terrific writing. There was a use on occasion of photos, links to video — adding another level. But the writing is what puts some of what he’s doing in a different category. He is bringing great writing “chops” to this format and figuring out how to write for it.

Online Commentary/Blogging, Large Site
Hero Complex, Los Angeles Times
Elegantly executed. It’s an extremely well-rounded perspective on pretty much everything covered, taking a mass popular culture subject and going very deeply into the subject. The blog helps you discover things.

Outstanding Use of Digital Technologies, Small Site
Muckety
This is impressive from a technical standpoint.. Even if I can understand how these diagrams were built, it impresses me that they can be manipulated, expanded, contracted, saved, centered, trimmed, etc. at this level. Wow. Not only does this site’s technology produce cutting-edge and relevant journalism, but it allows you to do the same.

Outstanding Use of Digital Technologies, Large Site
The New York Times, Interactive Graphics
Super groundbreaking. Head and shoulders above the rest. Election widgets everywhere were good last year. The New York Times’ was extra good. The Olympics graphics really brought me into it. I am not a sports fan but I watched it over and over again. There’s nothing that compares to it.

Online Video Journalism, Small Site
Danny Wilcox Frazier, Produced by MediaStorm, Driftless: Stories from Iowa
This is a stark, black-and-white tale of an Iowa family of farmers. It feels extremely original, the camera work seems expert and the interviews will break your heart while never lingering on any one expression or sentiment. There’s a richness, restraint and even a little dark humor here that was nowhere in any of the other videos.

Online Video Journalism, Large Site
Slate V, The Power Recap
Very funny expression of presidential campaign highlights, built entirely on selection of key moments in stills and video and then blending them in a frenetic editing style that works to create the “viral video” formula. It is an interesting commentary experiment offering the kind of analysis that cannot ordinarily be found in straight journalistic reporting by newspapers.

Community Collaboration
Next Door Media, My Ballard
My Ballard is exactly what newspapers are trying to do with hyperlocal content. And these guys do it. There was no site that fulfills the sense of community collaboration better. It’s the literal definition of the category. It’s extremely useful for the neighborhood and because it lists cool places to go, it works for others.

Student Journalism, Small Team
Lisa Pickoff-White, University of California, Berkeley, It Happens at Midnight
Creative; and had a lot of stuff going on. It’s fun it’s entertaining, it’s creative.The design, tools and interactivity are even better than the basic report told, so that elevates it as a fine example of how to tell an online story in multiple components.

Student Journalism, Large Team
UNC-Chapel Hill, Andaman Rising
Beautiful job with photographic storytelling. A very nice project that many a professional organization would be proud to have on their site.

The judges of this year’s awards were:

Rich Beckman, Knight Chair of Visual Journalism, School of Communication, University of Miami
Alberto Cairo, James H. Shumaker Assistant Professor, School of Journalism, UNC-Chapel Hill
Stephen Engelberg, Managing Editor, ProPublica
Rich Jaroslovsky, Technology/Digital Media Columnist, Bloomberg News
Keith W. Jenkins, Supervising Senior Producer for Multimedia, NPR.org
Tom Kennedy, Multimedia Journalism Consultant
Solana Larsen, Managing Editor, Global Voices
Suzanne Levinson, Director of Site Operations, Miami Herald Media Co.
Michelle Nicolosi, Executive Producer, seattlepi.com
Tenny Tatusian, Associate Editor, latimes.com
Matt Thompson, Interim Online Community Manager, Knight Foundation
Molly Wood, Executive Editor, CNETTV.com

Judges of the non-English awards were:

Rosental Alves, Professor and Knight Chair in Journalism, University of Texas
Paul Brannan, Editor, Emerging Platforms, BBC News
Katie King, Creative and Development Editor, MSN UK
Eric Scherer, Director of Strategic Planning, Agence-France Presse

Judges of the Gannett Foundation Award for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism were:
Bob Greiner, Manager, Editorial Tools and Projects, washingtonpost.com
Steve Outing, Digital Media Consultant; Columnist, Editor & Publisher
Margaret Rosas, Founder and Chief Strategist, Quiddities Dev, Inc.
Danny Sanchez, Digital Platform Manager, Hartford Courant/Fox61.

Judges were recused from discussing categories in which their own organization or organizations they are associated with were entered.

During day two of Confession Sessions, we asked ONA attendees to share why they got into this business and to look ahead to future of journalism.

Liz Lufkin, co-chair of the 2009 ONA Conference, reveals the moment she knew she wanted to become a journalist. from Online News Association on Vimeo.

Watch all of the Confession Sessions from the conference:

Want to chime in? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

As part of the 2009 Online News Association Conference, the student newsroom conducted a live poll. Using Poll Everywhere, over two days, we asked people to text or tweet their response to the question: What will save journalism? The responses were updated in real time and appeared on the conference site for the duration. This is a word cloud of the responses.

By Anna Bloom

Online Journalism Award (OJA) winners this year won’t soon be forgotten. In between an exhibit of Pulitzer prize-winning photography and drawers of newspapers dating back to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, many of 2009′s innovators and their projects will be welcomed into the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. The museum is archiving the winners as part of a new effort to preserve history in an era that is not naturally wired for nostalgia.

“The phrase has always been that journalism is the first draft of history,” said Thom Lieb, a professor of mass communication at Maryland’s Towson University. “Unfortunately, in the digital age, those drafts are disappearing.”

The 2009 OJA winners (full list) have a lot in common with their ancestors at the Newseum, said Lieb, who was instrumental in connecting the museum with ONA. Both the winners and their predecessors focused on local interests and independent journalism.

For example, Publish 2, which offers journalists a set of linking tools that foster collaboration between journalists and readers, received $5,000 as the first Gannett Foundation Award winner for technical innovation in the service of digital journalism. The Gotham Gazette, a civic-minded resource for New York City, awarded a Creative Use Award in 2004 by OJA, was this year recognized again for its general excellence in the micro site category. Next Door Media’s My Ballard, a Seattle neighborhood site, was recognized as the first to receive a Community Collaboration Award.

“For all the neighborhood newsites, I think this is a respected stamp of approval for all the sites,” said Cory Bergman who accepted the award with Kate, his wife and co-founder of Next Door Media.

Among the other award-winners was The Chauncey Bailey Project, an in-depth investigation by more than 24 journalists into the murder of an Oakland Post reporter. The project took home two awards, receiving $5,000 for the Knight Award for Public Service and OJA’s award for investigative journalism in the small site category. Guantanamo: Beyond the Law, by McClatchy journalists Tom Lasseter and Matt Schofield, was honored by ONA for investigative journalism for a large site. ProPublica, the LasVegasSun.com, and The New York Times were also honored, each receiving a $3,000 cash prize from the Gannett Foundation for general excellence.

Overseas winners included Kazakhstan’s Radio Azattyq, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Kazakh Service for the small-site category for standing in defense of citizen’s rights to seek and receive information when Kazakh authorities tried to ban a book critical of the president. Spain’s soitu.es won an OJA large site award for its focus on audience-focused engagement and its mix of original content and aggregated material.

For Breaking News, OJA awarded top honors to Pressconnects.com/Press & Sun-Bulletin for its coverage of a mass shooting, the BBC News for its coverage of the Mumbai Attacks, and Knoxnews.com for its coverage of a church shooting.

In the Specialty Site Journalism category, Yale Environment 360 was recognized for its melting pot of news, opinion and community engagement. The Military Times was recognized for its service to a community that lacks a geographic center.

The OJA Awards for Multimedia Feature Presentation went to the National Film Board of Canada for Waterlife, the LasVegasSun.com for Quenching Las Vegas’ Thirst, and Washington Post Digital for Sacred Ground: The Building of the Pentagon Memorial.

The ONA Awards for Topical Reporting/Blogging went to The Flame Trench, Florida Today’s Space Team Blog and NPR.org’s Planet Money. The ONA Awards for Online Commentary/Blogging went to Christopher Buckley of The Daily Beast and Hero Complex by the Los Angeles Times.

Muckety and The New York Times Interactive Graphics won for Outstanding Use of Digital Technologies. In the student journalism category, awards were given to Lisa Pickoff-White, a graduate student at University of California, Berkeley for her project, It Happens at Midnight, and to students at UNC-Chapel Hill for Andaman Rising. A special recognition was given to Doug Feaver of washingtonpost.com, who received the Rich Jaroslovsky Award for lifetime service to ONA.

For Online Video Journalism, ONA gave awards to MediaStorm’s Danny Wilcox Frazier for Driftless: Stories from Iowa and Slate V for The Power Recap.

In the next year Lieb will begin the daunting task of hunting down award winners from the last 10 years, knowing that some projects, and their creators, might be impossible to find again. The BBC’s 24-Hours of War, a video project about wars throughout the world, for example, has a site, but the videos themselves are gone, says Lieb.

“It’s a project I’d love my students to see but it’s no longer available,” he said. “Someone leaves the OJA awards doing cartwheels and then they move on.”

This year, however, will be different. After the ceremony, Lieb interviewed the winners from Muckety, soitu.es, The Chauncey Bailey Project, Pressconnect.com, BBC News, NPR and MyBallard for the Newseum exhibit.

Judges of 2009’s Online Journalism Awards

• Rosental Alves, Professor and Knight Chair in Journalism, University of Texas
• Rich Beckman, Knight Chair of Visual Journalism, School of Communication, University of Miami
• Paul Brannan, Editor, Emerging Platforms, BBC News
• Alberto Cairo, James H. Shumaker Assistant Professor, School of Journalism, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Stephen Engelberg, Managing Editor, ProPublica
• Rich Jaroslovsky, Technology/Digital Media Columnist, Bloomberg News
• Keith W. Jenkins, Supervising Senior Producer for Multimedia, NPR.org
• Tom Kennedy, Multimedia Journalism Consultant
• Katie King, Creative and Development Editor, MSN UK
• Solana Larsen, Managing Editor, Global Voices
• Suzanne Levinson, Director of Site Operations, Miami Herald Media Co.
• Michelle Nicolosi, Executive Producer, seattlepi.com
• Eric Scherer, Director of Strategic Planning, Agence-France Presse
• Tenny Tatusian, Associate Editor, latimes.com
• Matt Thompson, Interim Online Community Manager, Knight Foundation
• Molly Wood, Executive Editor, CNETTV.com

The click-through slideshow was photographed by Armand Emamdjomeh and Nicole Fallek and photo edited by Isabel Esterman.

This multimedia presentation on mobile technology was created using VuVox and includes video excerpts with David LaFontaine. LaFontaine delivered a presentation at the 2009 ONA Conference titled “Creating Content with Your Phone.”

Lauren Gentile is a sophomore at American University and Abby Selden is a senior at Belmont University. They were reporting on the conference with the 2009 ONA student newsroom.

ONA Conference workshops have focused almost exclusively on North American issues and trends.  But one session, “The State of Global Innovation,” brought an international perspective. Editors from Spain, Germany, Mexico and Brazil converged to discuss how they are keeping their publications fresh and relevant.  “Unique conditions in each of these countries produce unique responses,” said moderator James Brinier, director of Universidad de Guadalajara’s center for digital journalism.  Here’s a sample of what they had to offer:

From Brazil: Going mobile

There are only 180 million mobile subscribers in Brazil, said O Globo Executive Editor Raquel Almeida, but she believes the technology is about to take off.  “Something huge is coming,” she said, and O Globo is trying to stay ahead of the curve by offering news on every available platform and keeping up communication with its readers.

For O Globo, this has meant building a mobile Web site that allows readers to vote and comment and creating a mobile app that lets readers submit stories and photos directly to the newsroom.  “We gave this to our readers, then suddenly people were sending reports from all over the city,” said Almeida.  “We had eyes and ears all over the place.”

Spain: Innovating Social Content

Newsrooms across America are scrambling to integrate Twitter into reporting, but Madrid-based news site soitu.es is heading in the opposite direction.  Twitter can be a great source of information, said soitu Director Borja Echevarria. “But we believe it shouldn’t be the only one.”

Twitter crashes, it doesn’t allow users to post photos in a stream, and it can’t be used to post an interview anyone can follow, Echevarria said.  So instead of building a Twitter application, soitu built its own social network, utoi, and devoted the top right column of its homepage to displaying utoi content.   The feed has text, links and photos contributed by both community members and soitu reporters.  Controlling its own social network has allowed soitu to benefit from user engagement but still allows editorial staff to filter and prioritize what makes it onto the site. Utoi launched just 15 days ago, Echevarria said, and they’re working to develop utoi widgets and other tools to keep the network spreading. “It’s very important for us to experiment, to innovate.”

Germany: Staying Sticky

The vast majority of traffic to Spiegel Online’s German and English sites is direct, reports Spiegel International Editor Daryl Lindsey.  Many users keep Spiegel Online as their homepage–especially the German edition, for which only 10 percent of the traffic comes from search engines.  To keep repeat visitors, the site needs a constant supply of fresh, unique content.  “We’re a shovelware-free zone,” Lindsey said.

Spiegel International does experiment with community-generated content, but professionally produced text-and-photo journalism is still the core of the site, says Lindsey.  What makes this possible is a staff of 100 journalists in a Web-only newsroom.  Other German publications cut staff after the dot.com crash, but Spiegel online held staffing steady and has since been increasing.  “In five years we might have the same crisis that’s happening here with the San Francisco Chronicle,” concedes Lindsey. But for now, Spiegel online is going strong–the Web-only newsroom has been turning a profit since 2007.

Isabel Esterman is a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley. She is working in the student newsroom at ONA’09.

Amy Webb defines the leading edge of a field known for innovation. The digital media consultant, writer and adviser to numerous news organizations is engrossed in the intersection of journalism and technology.

Webb founded Webbmedia Group in 2005. The digital media consulting company helps businesses and media organizations adapt technology tools for everyday use. In 2009, under Webbmedia, she launched “Knowledgewebb.net,” which she describes as “an affordable solution to learning and training for everyone and anyone working in content.”

Before founding Webbmedia, Webb wrote about technology and business trends for publications, including the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek and The Economist.

The story of Webb’s entry into online journalism could only be described as kismet. Webb says a number of her friends were working in engineering and technology jobs. Her own work in technology, as well as her personal interest in the field, grew out of the people she knew. “Plus, I’m an insomniac, and I think that helps a lot,” Webb said during a recent interview.

At this year’s conference, Webb, who is a member of ONA’s board of directors, recast her popular “Ten Tech Trends” talk for a 2009 audience. Webb has given the presentation at the last three ONA conferences. She said she constantly revamps the talk—even down to the wire–to make sure she includes the most up-to-date information.

During the talk, she discussed the need to think about technology from a consumer perspective, rather than a reporter’s perspective and suggested new ways journalists should approach technology.

Here’s a list of the Ten Tech Trends Webb highlighted this year:

1. The “Real Time Web”
2. Lightblogging
3. Personalization
4. Interactive TV
5. Identity recognition
6. Augmented reality
7. User-generated sensor data
8. Mobilife
9. Geolocation 3.0
10. The “Internet of Things”

The overarching goal of the talk was to get journalists in any medium to be more forward-thinking in their integration of technology into their craft.  She applied this same idea of broad technological literacy in her opinion on journalism education.

Webb doesn’t think students should leave school having had an hour of Flash training or a short seminar on how to use Twitter. “That’s not what the marketplace needs,” Webb says.

Instead, she thinks journalism educators should focus on making students more aware of technology overall, rather than suggesting they learn a specific programming language or application. Webb calls it “teaching to the technology.” Webb is on the advisory board for Philadelphia-based Temple University’s journalism department.

Webb said she’s seen the challenges American news organizations face—staff cutbacks leading to more responsibility for individual staffers—worldwide. She says in all the news organizations she’s visited, journalists are coming to terms with the idea that they have to do more with less.

Nonetheless, she’s encouraged by the future of journalism and says news organizations like ProPublica and The New York Times have made encouraging progress integrating tech tools into investigative reporting. Webb says it’s key that journalists continue to learn storytelling skills alongside an awareness of technology, rather than attempting to become engineers or developers.

“Journalists should not be experts at coding,” Webb said. “Journalists should be experts at journalism and be able to have a conversation with coders.”

When I arrived at the 2009 ONA conference in San Francisco, I was bombarded with an information explosion. After attending conference sessions, collaborating with mentors, and sifting through numerous new tools for journalists and communicators, here are five important and interesting things I learned during my time here.

How did Twitter get its name?

The name Twitter, made famous by the site where you can express a thought, share a link or break news in 140 characters or less, has found its way into the vocabulary of people worldwide. Millions of people send out “tweets” ever day—but just how did these new words make their way into everyday conversation?  Evan Williams, CEO Twitter, said in his opening keynote address that we “twitch” when our phone vibrates in our pocket, and birds make a chirping noise when they communicate. Twitter sounded better than Twitch and the brand evolved from there. Williams also joked, “It sounds better than ‘status updates.’”

The Future of Television

We all love to interact on our computers—click links, scroll through photos and buy merchandise. Soon we will have similar capabilities on our television screens. Amy Webb, founder of Knowledgewebb.net, said that some companies have already made strides to enable television audiences to click on a certain area of the screen—maybe a vase on a table in the latest episode of Desperate Housewives or Tony Romo’s football jersey—you will then be directed to their Web site or your Amazon account to purchase the product. Twitter and Facebook feeds can also be displayed on the side of your television screen.

How to find your way out of a paper bag–or Town Hall.

We have all relied on Google Maps or MapQuest to get us where we need to be. The next problem is getting to your final destination, for example, the office where your interview is inside a ten-story building.  Fear no more. Thanks to an evolving app called Micello, you will soon be able to navigate your way around office buildings, airports, college campuses and shopping malls using your mobile phone.

Digital Wallet

Starbucks has launched a new iPhone App that allows you to pay for your latte with your phone.  The new mobile Starbucks card displays a barcode on your iPhone that the Barista scans when you get to the counter. The app also allows for you to check your balance, add money using another credit card and view purchase history. Amy Webb says apps like this may be the new face of credit cards worldwide.

The power of photojournalists

When professional photojournalist Najlah Feanny set out to complete her master’s degree thesis project at Parsons School of Design in New York City, she never thought she would touch the lives of hundreds of foster kids nationwide. Originally Feanny wanted to create a portrait gallery of six teenagers waiting to be adopted. She wanted to use the Internet to put real faces to the national problem of teenage adoption. Feanny started her “Heart Gallery of New Jersey” photo project in 2005 by reaching out to the Division of Youth and Family Services in search of six names.  She received more than 300.  Unable to cut the list to six names, Feanny then recruited other photojournalists to help photograph each child. Her efforts yielded heart-warming results: 135 foster kids from the original 350 were adopted. Since then, Feanny has expanded the project to Do1Thing.org, a site dedicated to helping foster kids and homeless teenagers find homes. This project includes a nationwide day of service in which photojournalists and editors donate their time to produce stories about children aging out of the foster care system who face homelessness.

Lessons learned

As a student  immersed in new media and technology on a daily basis, I never thought that I would learn so much about Web technology and innovations in the news business at ONA09. I think it’s fair to say that I was a little overconfident upon my arrival. As I’m scheduled to return to the East Coast tomorrow morning, I find myself reflecting back on everything I learned during my time here. Not only did I discover new apps, Web sites and tools for journalists on the Web, I discovered what it really means to be a successful journalist. After hearing about Feanny’s story, I realized that journalism isn’t just about telling a captivating story or delivering news to the public. The Internet, together with journalism, gives us the opportunity to change lives and make a difference.

Lauren Gentile is a sophomore at American University in Washington, D.C. She is part of the ONA09 student newsroom.

HD cameras, high-fidelity microphones and professional editing software can produce beautiful, polished videos.  But what if you need to get something up on the Web fast?

User studies show the public generally values flexibility and timeliness over perfection, said Tiffany Campbell, a seattletimes.com producer.  Sometimes, quick and dirty is the way to go.

For breaking news or short companion videos, simple tools like the Flip camera and iMovie may be the best choice, said Campbell.   They may not produce documentary-quality films, but the production value is good enough not to discourage viewers, and they allow reporters to shoot, edit, and post a story in as little as an hour.

That sounded like a challenge to me, so I thought I’d give it a try.  I went to Campbell’s workshop armed with a Flip camera and a tripod, aiming to produce a short video based on the session. I have some experience with shooting and editing video, but I’d never touched a Flip before, or edited with iMovie, so I planned to give myself an hour to import and edit my footage.

The Flip’s audio quality isn’t much better than a cell phone, Campbell warned, and the camera performs poorly in low light.  Otherwise, it’s about as foolproof as a video recorder can get.  A button on the side turns it on, plus and minus buttons zoom in and out, and a big red button starts recording. The flip has a tripod mount on the bottom, and once I got it clipped in, I could easily move around the room, looking for shots.

The real advantage, though, comes when it’s time to import.  There’s no tape to capture, no intermediate codec to run through.  You just open iMovie, plug in the Flip’s built-in USB connector and hit ‘Import.’

I had a little trouble when I tried importing my own footage. iMovie ’08 gave me repeated error messages–a problem other workshop participants complained of as well. I switched to a computer with iMovie ‘09, and it still took two tries to get all of my clips into iMovie.  But even with these setbacks, I was ready to start editing in 10 minutes.  Compared to logging DV tape or flash video, this was lightening fast.

iMovie definitely has its shortcomings.  I found it hard to make precise edits, I couldn’t edit audio waveforms, and I had to rely on a few preset options for adding text. But I also found the limitations oddly liberating–I was free from worrying too much about artistic choices, and could concentrate on moving as fast as my limited skill would allow.

At 56 minutes in, I was ready to show my piece to a colleague.  He suggested tightening up a few sections, which took another 10 minutes.  After two minutes exporting to an m4v file, I had a finished piece, ready to be uploaded.  I took eight minutes longer than I’d hoped, and a few of my cuts were pretty rough.  I don’t think this video is great, but I think it just might be good enough.

Isabel Esterman, a freelance photojournalist and a graduate student in journalism and Asian studies at UC Berkeley, is a member of the ONA09 student newsroom.