Programs
ONA Annual Conference
The Online News Association Conference is the premier gathering of highly engaged digital journalists who are shaping the future of media. Join us for ONA26, March 30-April 1, 2026, in Chicago.
Learn more about ONA26 | Subscribe to our conference newsletter for updates.
AI in Journalism Initiative
This program helps news organizations evaluate tools and set strategy through hands-on trainings, practitioner meetups and gatherings with leaders in journalism and technology.
Online Journalism Awards
The Online Journalism Awards (OJAs), launched in May 2000, are the only comprehensive set of journalism prizes honoring excellence in digital journalism around the world. Submissions usually open in April or May, with finalists announced in August and winners celebrated at the annual ONA conference.
Digital Women Leaders (DWL)
DWL is a mentorship resource that connects women and non-gender binary people working in news with knowledgeable, understanding mentors who might otherwise be hard to find.
Women’s Leadership Accelerator
The Women’s Leadership Accelerator 2025 is a four-month, intensive program that supercharges the leadership and management skills of women who are pushing digital innovation. Participants will focus on a challenge specific to their careers and learn leadership skills and tools for navigating change. The Accelerator kicks off with a virtual meeting of the selected cohort in December 2025, provides support and coaching to participants throughout the winter, and culminates with a two-day in-person workshop at ONA26.
Networking Events
Join our virtual networking events, supporting audience, product, business and digital news professionals around topics like sharing tools, new ideas and collaboration efforts.
HBCU Digital Media Fellowship
This fellowship selects students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) to attend ONA’s annual conference and receive hands-on experience in creating multimedia packages, as well as mentorship focused on emerging technologies, tools and approaches to reporting and distributing news online.
MJ Bear Fellowship
Each year, ONA awards Fellowships in the name of the late MJ Bear, a much-loved ONA founding member, to three stand-out journalists under age 30 whose innovative work in independent, community and corporate news represents the best of new media.
Special thanks to our ONA supporters.
Previous Programs
Student Newsroom
The Student Newsroom and Innovation Lab, which ran from 2003 through 2023, immersed undergraduate and graduate college students in a digital media environment by providing hands-on experience covering ONA’s Annual Conference and Online Journalism Awards ceremony.
Executive Women Leaders Salon
ONA hosted a three-part conversation series in 2023 designed to open space for women in executive digital journalism leadership. At these events, participants networked and developed their skills around cultivating organizational resilience and finding creative ways to support the professional development and growth of their teams.
Career Day
ONA Career Day is a great opportunity for job, higher ed and fellowship opportunity seekers to make valuable connections and participate in career-focused learning and networking. Career Day 2023 was held March 9, 2023.
To learn when our next Career Day event will be held virtually, make sure you’re subscribed to the ONA Weekly newsletter.
Recruiters from newsrooms, companies at the intersection of media and tech, academic and fellowship programs, and others looking to connect with ambitious, digitally-savvy candidates from the ONA community can learn about being a part of ONA’s annual conference — our biggest event of the year — as well as year-round options.
Community Circles
ONA Community Circles were launched at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic designed to connect groups of community members to address evolving challenges within the community. Each circle was a small virtual discussion group, which presented an opportunity for a deeper connection among peers and resource sharing.
Journalism 360
Journalism 360 is a global network of storytellers accelerating the understanding and production of immersive journalism. Our mission is to help news organizations, journalists, technologists, content creators and journalism educators experiment with all forms of immersive storytelling, including but not limited to 360 video, augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality.
Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education
The goal of the Challenge Fund is to hack the journalism curriculum using customized versions of the teaching hospital model. The fund supports universities to partner with news organizations, and explore new ways of providing information to their local communities.
Journalism Mentorship Collaborative
Members of the ONA community have often cited the lack of diversity in newsrooms as one of the biggest challenges in journalism. Newsrooms need clarity on mentorship, training, retention and more. The Collaborative’s goal is to make newsrooms more inclusive by sharing best practices and fresh ideas on mentorship programs.
CNN Diversity Fellowship
For the past three years, the CNN Diversity Fellowship has recognized digital journalists from diverse backgrounds with experience reporting for mobile and social platforms. Selected fellows receive an all-expenses paid trip to our annual conference to participate in one-on-one networking and mentoring events.
AP-Google Scholarship
The AP-Google Journalism and Technology Scholarship Program, which ended with our last class in 2014, fostered new journalism skills in undergraduate and graduate students developing projects at the intersection of journalism and technology.
ONA Camps
ONACamps, which ended in 2016, were free intensive digital journalism training sessions, courtesy of generous renewed grants from the Gannett Foundation. Sessions were tailored specifically to the needs of independent, community, non-profit, displaced and employed journalists, bloggers and entrepreneurs.