We can’t afford your conference.

This post is co-authored by Mallory Colliflower and Lori Marie Todd. Mallory graduated in spring 2008 from the University of Florida and works part time at the Miami Herald as an online content producer. Lori graduated in 2006 from the University of Miami and has worked at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Austin American-Statesman before returning to the Miami Herald as a news page designer in September 2008.

We’ve got a bone to pick with some of our favorite professional organizations. At a time when most people in the US have had to adjust their lifestyles because of the economic downturn and as the newspaper industry is struggling to survive, industry-wide training and conferences have simply gotten too expensive for many of us to attend.

THE FACTS

There have been 31,757 layoffs and buyouts at U.S. newspapers since June 2007[1].

If you’re lucky enough to not be counted in the figure above, you’ve likely had to take a pay cut (many people have been docked as much as 10%[2]) and/or mandatory time off work.

In addition, company training budgets are getting slashed, and many are nearly non-existent. At Lori’s last job and her current one, the papers were unable to send any employees to the Society for News Design annual conference. Lori was able to negotiate time off to attend the National Press Photographer’s Association’s Multimedia Immersion and Convergence09 conference in June because she was willing to foot the bill for the entire thing (which came to over $2,000 after tuition, airfare, hotel and minor gear purchases – Thank you, MasterCard).

THE CONSEQUENCES

Expensive conferences create a pay-to-play environment [3].  While it’s easier than ever to catch a livestream of a conference (The Online News Association did a fantastic job, utilizing technology and equipment from Livestream.com), physical attendance is invaluable. You cannot network like you can in person. Those lucky few who are able to afford attending these conferences are able to make connections with big names in our industry, not necessarily because of merit, but because they can afford to be there. Even if they can, the current work environment in most newsrooms is strapped, leaving little or no staff to cover shifts.

Expensive conferences put out-of-work journalists at an even greater disadvantage. Attending industry events and keeping skill sets up-to-date are all we can rely on to market ourselves in a suddenly flooded field of applicants.  Attending a conference is resume material. Following a conference online is not.

Sending only newsroom veterans is counterproductive to innovation. Recent college graduates who are employed should be attending these conferences because they are bursting with optimism and ideas and are the future of our industry. So often do newsroom veterans look to us, the wired generation, for clues and tips for adapting news for the Web and starting conversations with the audience. They need our help. We should be better equipped to give it to them.

We realize that there’s a lot of cost associated with putting on a professional conference. Venue fees. Speaker fees. Bandwidth charges. And so on. However, it seems that the cost of these conferences have not adjusted to consider the state of the industry. Some of the speakers at these conferences are reimbursed for every penny spent. That’s not to say that they shouldn’t be, but it’s ironic given that these are the people who can often afford the conference in the first place.

THE SOLUTION

Mark S. Luckie of 10,000 Words provides a great list of resources for journalists to learn technical skills. We urge journalists to take advantage of the these opportunities. However, they are no replacement for in-person training and networking.

We want an affordable alternative to the big annual conferences, with a comparable level of networking and training that you’d pay hundreds of dollars at SND, ONA, NPPA or other conferences. We propose a BarCamp-style unconference.

What’s that? As defined on BarCamp.org:

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants who are the main actors of the event.

At Miami’s last BarCamp, Greg Linch (of Publish2, who at the time was a University of Miami student), led a track called NewsInnovation, which focused on creating better ways to deliver news.

Holding a similar event in your area, either on your own with fellow journalists, or in conjunction with an already established BarCamp, is one way we can train one another on the cheap, and still get to do a lot of the face-to-face networking that you would do at a national conference, but on a regional scale. We are in the very early stages of doing this ourselves and will blog it as it comes together.

If you have any ideas on how to make conferences more affordable, or want to throw around your ideas with us, leave a comment below or chat with us on Twitter. Mallory can be reached at @malcolli and Lori at @loritodd.

Footnotes:

1 This number totals those reported on Erica Smith’s Paper Cuts, a Google Maps mashup which tracks layoffs and buyouts at U.S. newspapers. It does not include job cuts made through attrition. (Numbers as of October 10, 2009.)

2 At McClatchy owned Miami Herald, employees making over $25,000 a year were given a 5% pay cut, over $50,000 were given 10% pay cut. On top of this, all full-time employees had to take five furlough days between before October 31, 2009.

3 We do realize that some concessions have been made in consideration of the economic state: NPPA’s Convergence09 workshop was under $100 for members (professionals and students). SND froze registration rates and members paid 2008’s rates and students who registered early did not have to pay any registration fees.

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