Join us for the Ohio News Media and Collegiate Fellowship Day on Thursday, March 26!

Event will include Hooper and Collegiate Award presentations!

Date: Thursday, March 26
Location: Quest Conference Center, located at 9200 Worthington Rd Ste 400, Westerville, OH 43082
Parking and Access: The conference center has plenty of parking. Once inside the building, take the elevators to the 4th floor.

REGISTER AT THIS LINK>>

Don't miss your chance to attend the Ohio News Media and Collegiate Fellowship Day on March 26, 2026 from 9 am to 3:30 pm at the Quest Conference Center. The one-day event include the award presentations for the Osman C. Hooper Non-Daily Newspaper Competition and the Ohio Collegiate Newspaper and Website Competition along with a luncheon, idea-exchange roundtables, a panel discussion, and networking opportunities.

Registration for the one-day event is $75 for the first person from an ONMA member paper and $65 for each additional person from the same paper. Registration for students and faculty at ONMA member colleges is $50.

Special discount: Any individual newspaper or college that purchases three paid registrations for the event will receive a fourth registration for free. Note this discount applies to individual newspapers, not multiple registrations within a larger newspaper company or group.

The Quest Conference Center is located next to the Polaris shopping area and a number of hotels and restaurants.

Ohio News Media Fellowship Day Schedule

9:00 am: Registration Opens

9:30 am — Welcome by Beryl Love, ONMA Board President, and Monica Nieporte, ONMA Executive Director

9:45 am — Hooper and Collegiate Awards Ceremony

11:00 am — Presentation of the Newspaper and College Papers of the Year Awards along with the ONMA President’s Award and Maxwell Award

11:20 am — Break

11:25 am — ONMA’s New Advertising Guide

• ONMA has updated its advertising handbook to include recent changes to public notice laws. The update also includes new topics such as online gambling platform ads, medical and recreational marijuana ads and guidance about marijuana ads in newspapers that are mailed as the postal regulations also apply to these. We will have some hard copies of the guide available to distribute as well as an electronic version that will be available to members through our website. rules about raffles

12:00 pm — Lunch

1:00 pm — How Journalists Are Treated Has Changed. What Does This Mean for Reporters and How Do We Keep Them Safe?

Panel discussion featuring legal experts John C. Greiner with Faruki PLL in Ohio, Isabella Salomão Nascimento with Ballard Spahr LLP in Minneapolis, and Mickey H. Osterreicher with Finnerty Osterreicher & Abdulla in New York

• Over the last year, clearly identified reporters have been assaulted by federal agents while covering protests, detained by law enforcement, sprayed with tear gas in the face, and had their cameras and phones taken. Have the old “rules” of journalism changed in the United States, especially with regards to how the public and members of law enforcement now view reporters doing their jobs? In addition, there are growing attempts by government officials to deny access to public spaces to journalists such as by wrongly refusing to cooperate with public records requests or open meetings laws. This panel of first amendment lawyers who defend journalists across the county will discuss what they’re seeing and how reporters can protect themselves. They’ll also discuss what steps reporters can take in response to these attempts and if courts are still holding up free-press rights and following longstanding precedents on journalists doing their jobs.

2:15 pm — Roundtable Discussions

• Public Notices: Ideas for keeping your government customers happy and wanting to continue to run their public notices in your paper. What has your experience been since the law changed so counties, cities and townships are able to run notices on their own websites? Does this make it harder for editorial staff to know what is happening?
• Unhappy News Subjects: How are changes in Ohio's libel laws, in particular the state's new anti-SLAPP law, affecting your papers? In addition, discussions will touch on how papers are dealing with news subjects who are unhappy with articles long after they were published.
• Events, Special Sections and Other New Revenue Sources: Ideas to generate top line revenue and community engagement. Newspapers hosting events were popular before covid and then had to go on hiatus. Are your papers now finding success with events? What are events that can be replicated in other markets? Plus, what’s the best new special section you’ve launched recently in terms of advertiser participation, along with other new revenue sources at your paper?
• Audience Engagement: What platforms are you using to reach new readers and which platforms are best for reaching different age groups? For example, what are you doing on TikTok or Instagram to reach younger readers and are you doing anything beyond Facebook? What about podcasts?
• Campus Coverage: What has changed in terms of covering breaking news events or protests on campus? What are the challenges for college newspapers and media in covering a board of trustees member, faculty or university donor who is in the news for the wrong reasons?
• New Markets/Refreshed Opportunities: What are some of the best practices when consolidating formerly independent coverage areas into a new product? How do you make sure readers feel this is still “their paper”? How do you settle discrepancies in advertising rates? Subscription prices? If you started a new paper recently, what is one thing you would do differently if you could do it again?
• Artificial Intelligence: How do you use it and not have content read like it is AI? What are the pitfalls you need to be wary of? How do you avoid falling into the trap of deep fakes? Are things like Grok and ChatGPT an acceptable way to verify information? What is your newspaper’s policy on all this?
• Open Discussion Table, Anything Goes

3:30 pm — Event closes