Press Association/Foundation 2021 CONVENTION AGENDA May 5-7, 2021 Central Standard Time Zone Wednesday, May 5 8:30 – 9:00 a.m. – HOUSE SPEAKER EMANUEL “CHRIS” WELCH House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch not only became the first Black leader of the House when he was elected to the position in January, he succeeded the longest-standing leader in U.S. history – Michael Madigan. Welch became speaker as the General Assembly continued to balance its responsibilities with the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic. Welch will speak about all of that and more – and take questions – as the General Assembly enters the final weeks of its spring session.

9:05 – 9:35 a.m. – SENATE PRESIDENT DON HARMON Senate President Don Harmon Months after Don Harmon was elected Senate president in January 2020, the pandemic brought most activities at the state to a halt. Harmon will provide insight into the timing and decision making on how and when to conduct Senate business during the past year. In addition to answering questions, he’ll also discuss the dynamic of state government with a Democratic supermajority and new leadership in both chambers of the General Assembly.

9:45 – 10:45 a.m. – FLIPPING OBJECTIONS ON THE SPOT! By Ryan Dohrn, media sales coach Ryan Dohrn Objection handling is a skill that all newspaper salespeople need to master. COVID has put a new set of objections in play too. Ryan will highlight the six most common objections media salespeople face on a daily basis and show you how to flip those objections into closed deals with ease and style. Because Ryan sells every day, these objections and scenarios are timely, relevant, and practical. Ryan will dig deep into objections like, “I’m moving all my advertising to social media.” And, “I am not seeing ROI from print.” And, “Why don’t you just write an article about my company?” This workshop is designed to give sales reps at all levels the skills they need to walk into any conversation with an advertiser with confidence. With 25+ years’ experience in the media sales business, Ryan has heard it all. And because he still sells media today, his responses will be relevant, timely, and right on the mark!

11:00 – 11:45 a.m. – GET IT RIGHT WITH GOOD HIRES Panelists: Brad Guettel, talent acquisition manager with Lee Enterprises, Jason Hegna, VP of sales with Shaw Media, Jackie Martin, advertising director with The News-Gazette, and Bev Sams, advertising digital and marketing director with The Daily-Journal Brad Guettel Jason Hegna Jackie Martin Bev Sams

Join us as a panel of advertising leaders share their best practices in hiring and retaining sales reps. They will share their best hiring and interviewing techniques, compensation plans, sales motivation ideas, and retaining practices. This is for owners, publishers, ad directors and managers, sales managers or anyone that is working with sales teams.

Noon – 12:25 p.m. – BROADENING, LOCALIZING YOUR COVERAGE OF AGRICULTURE By Illinois Farm Bureau: Jeff Brown, director of news and communications and DeAnne Bloomberg, director of issues management Jeff Brown DeAnne Bloomberg The Illinois Farm Bureau and Illinois Press Association will announce an exciting new collaborative project to deliver more farming and food sector news to the state’s newspapers. Farm Bureau communications leaders DeAnne Bloomberg and Jeff Brown will also talk about how their organization’s journalists and content platforms may be used to increase, improve and localize your own agribusiness reporting.

12:35 – 1:00 p.m. – SELL MORE AND INCREASE EFFICIENCY ACROSS THE BOARD! By Lineup Systems: Markus Feldenkirchen, VP sales for North America and Daryl Kern, pre-sales expert M. Feldenkirchen Daryl Kern Increase your business agility by using one platform to manage every aspect of multichannel advertising sales and finance processes for all your publications. Learn how Lineup’s Adpoint CRM, A/R system will integrate print and digital advertising sales process onto one platform managing everything from generating leads for sales reps to payment collections.

1:15 – 2:00 p.m. – NEW BUSINESS MODELS FOR NEWSPAPERS By Brant Houston, professor and Knight chair of Investigative Reporting Journalism Department, College of Media University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Brant Houston The number of nonprofit newsrooms has been surging over the past decade. Most of them have been created by small groups of journalists who want to do community and watchdog reporting. More recently, some for-profit newspapers have been converting to nonprofit status to preserve their community journalism. This session will look at the reasons for the rise in the nonprofit model, how for-profit newspapers are collaborating with these newer journalism organizations, and what factors newspapers look at when weighing whether to become nonprofit.

2:15 – 3:15 p.m. – BUILD CREDIBILITY THROUGH NEWS LITERACY By Mark Baldwin, former executive editor of the Rockford Register Star Mark Baldwin We’ve all seen misinformation zip through our communities, not to mention around the world, in the blink of an eye. The best defense: a vigorous program of news literacy education. In this interactive session, you’ll learn how to build a news literacy movement in your community and why it makes good business sense.

3:30 – 4:30 p.m. – PRIORITIZING COVERAGE OF UNDERSERVED COMMUNITIES By Jeffry Couch, editor and general manager of the Belleville News-Democrat; Corina Curry, news director of the Rockford Register-Star; and Jeff D’Alessio, editor of the News-Gazette, Champaign Jeffry Couch Corina Curry Jeff D’Alessio

For decades, news organizations have struggled to consistently report on and connect with underserved communities in their coverage area. Corina Curry, recently named to the top newsroom position at the Rockford Register Star, will talk the paper’s focus and her emphasis as a reporter on watchdog journalism and investigative reporting that exposes disparities and inequities throughout the community. Jeffry Couch, editor and general manager of the Belleville News-Democrat, talks about how the addition of Report For America reporters to his newsroom has helped the paper diversify its coverage. Jeff D’Alessio, editor of the News-Gazette in Champaign, will talk about the newspaper’s “Being Black in America” series that earned it the national distinction as one of “10 News Publishers That Do It Right” by Editor & Publisher.

Thursday, May 6 8:30 -9:30 a.m. – GREAT IDEA EXCHANGE – THAT’S MY IDEA!

You will get some great advertising revenue ideas during this 45-minute session. We will share entries from newspapers around the state and announce the top four winners of $50 each.

9:45 – 10:45 a.m. – DIGITAL SELLING SKILLS By Charity Huff, CEO of January Spring Charity Huff Media sales veteran and serial entrepreneur, Charity Huff, will take you through the key skills and tools you need to arm your sales team with to successfully pivot your business. Digital content consumption is up 70% year-over-year. Audience, and access to those people, is more important than ever to local advertisers. In this one-hour, fast-paced talk, Charity will share:  How to rebuild your sales pipeline using the right sales automation tools, lead gen outreach and advertising mix.  How to package your full offering into the right multi-media selling machine.  Use case studies, testimonials and your own solid marketing as selling tools  How to leverage your audience to broaden the conversation with your advertiser

11:00 – 11:45 a.m. – PUBLIC NOTICES AND YOUR NEWSPAPER By Don Craven, IPA attorney, Sam Fisher, IPA president & CEO, Ginger Lamb, publisher of Daily Law Bulletin, David Manning with Manning Consulting, and Sue Walker, general manager Herald Newspapers, Inc. Don Craven Sam Fisher Ginger Lamb Dave Manning Sue Walker

The public notice landscape is under attack at legislatures across the country and Illinois has seen its fair share of bills this session. Learn how you can assist the Illinois Press Association get ahead of and defend future legislation. We’ll share tips and strategies publishers and their teams can use to build relationships with elected officials, ward off errors and put your best foot forward on preserving public notices in print and online at publicnoticeillinois.com. This program will also furnish you and your staff with an understanding about public notices, criteria for publication and what is needed to certify that the notices were properly completed to satisfy the publishing requirements.

Noon – 12:25 p.m. – CONNECTING WITH THE POWER SOURCE By Tucker Kennedy, director of community and public relations at Ameren Illinois Tucker Kennedy The energy industry is rapidly changing and growing, and Tucker Kennedy, director of community and public relations at Ameren Illinois, will talk about some of the ongoing initiatives of the provider of power to roughly two-thirds of the state. He’ll also discuss how Ameren can help Illinois newspapers cover important energy issues in their community. 12:35 – 1:00 p.m. – OPTIMIZING OBITUARIES TO DRIVE TRAFFIC AND INCREASE REVENUE By Devlyn Brooks, president of Modulist Devlyn Brooks Join media professionals with more than 25 years of experience to learn how obituaries drive digital traffic, ensure reader engagement and increase revenue. Attendees of this webinar will receive educational tools including best practices and online customer service materials. A portion of this presentation will be Question and Answer. Please feel free to submit a specific question before May 1 by emailing it to [email protected].

1:15 – 2:00 p.m. – GOOGLE BASIC TOOLS, SEARCHING AND FACT-CHECKING By Mike Reilley, SPJ digital trainer in the Google News Initiative program Mike Reilley Google basic tools, searching and fact-checking: Google Fact-Check Explorer, Google Public Data Explorer, Google Dataset Search, Google Scholar, MapChecking.com for crowd size estimates, Google Reverse Image Search for fact-checking photos and much more. All of the tools we’ll use are browser-based and free, so have your laptop with you and this primer open on a Chrome browser window: http://bit.ly/spjresources.

2:15 – 3:15 p.m. – PREP SPORTS DURING A PANDEMIC By Craig Anderson, IHSA executive director Craig Anderson The pandemic has changed almost every aspect of our lives in the past year. High school sports have been no different. Craig Anderson, the executive director of the agency tasked with managing the state’s high school sports, talks about how the games have changed in recent months. He’ll talk about the IHSA’s processes in determining how and when it was safe for high school athletes to return to action, how it worked with the state in making those decisions, and how it managed access for both spectators and the press. He’ll also provide a glimpse of what prep sports might look like during the 2021-22 school year.

3:30 – 4:30 p.m. – SMALL PAPERS HAVE A BIG IMPACT IN THEIR COMMUNITIES By Janice Hunt, owner and publisher of the Oakland Independent, and Pamela Lannom, co-owner and editor of The Hinsdalean Janice Hunt Pamela Lannom The COVID-19 pandemic has provided further evidence of how newspapers are crucial to keeping communities informed and connected. Few nondaily newspapers do it better in Illinois than the Oakland Independent and The Hinsdalean. Janice Hunt, owner and publisher of the Oakland Independent, and Pamela Lannom, editor of The Hinsdalean, talk about award-winning service projects their newspapers were able to execute, despite limited resources, to support their communities during challenging times.

Friday, May 7 9:00 – 10:00 a.m. – ILLINOIS PRESS ASSOCIATION ADVERTISING AWARDS

10:15 – 10:40 a.m. – USING AUTOMATION TO INCREASE AUDIENCE REVENUE AND ENGAGEMENT By Matthew Larson, president and CEO of Our-Hometown Matthew Larson With resources stretched thinner than ever, it’s never been more important for newsrooms to focus on automation, wherever possible. In this session, Matt will describe some of the turnkey ways publishers are automating marketing and content creation on Our Hometown’s WordPress Platform. He will discuss auto- renewing subscriptions, newsletter marketing, auto-publishing to social media, computer generated audio content, and how to automatically turn your newspaper into a podcast.

Noon – 12:45 p.m. – ILLINOIS MEDIA EDITOR AWARDS WITH GUEST SPEAKER ROBERT FEDER Robert Feder Robert Feder Year ago, when Robert Feder was breaking into the business, journalists were admired, jobs and opportunities were plentiful, and coverage was expanding. Today, none of that’s the case. What’s happened to the media landscape? And what does the future hold? The renowned columnist explores these questions and others you have about today’s media as a prologue to the annual IAPME awards presentation.

2:00 – 3:30 p.m. – ILLINOIS PRESS ASSOCIATION BEST OF THE PRESS AWARDS

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