Registration at the UNITY 08 convention.

By Venus Lee
The UNITY News Staff

As newsrooms across the nation struggle to survive through a sluggish economy, thousands of media professionals will blow into the Windy City this week for the largest gathering of journalists in U.S. history.

Officials estimate approximately 10,000 attendees will converge in Chicago for UNITY: A New Journalism for a Changing World - five days of events, speakers, workshops and discussions that are relevant to current issues in the media industry. Planning a convention this big was no easy task. It required cooperation, dedication and hard work from an overarching organization and numerous volunteers for nearly four years.

The backbone of planning the convention was UNITY: Journalists of Color, a strategic alliance of four national journalism organizations: Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Native American Journalists Association.

Barbara Ciara, NABJ president and UNITY board member, said she couldn’t come up with an adjective that effectively describes what it’s like to pull all these forces together and make it smooth.

“Securing the speakers, finding the moderators, juggling the sea of recruiters and pulling together the alliance partners to have them agree is a mammoth process,” she said.

For months, representatives from the four organizations debated the best location for the convention. They considered several major cities including Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Boston and Washington, D.C.

UNITY ’08 Convention Chair Bryan Monroe said each of the cities were strong candidates, but board members were ultimately impressed by Chicago’s offerings along the Magnificent Mile, a downtown restaurant and nightlife district along Michigan Avenue diverse communities, and a friendly, welcoming urban feel.

A committee of more than 100 staff members and volunteers handled production, promotion, programming and logistics.

“A lot of them have day jobs as working journalists at major news stations,” said Monroe, a vice president and editorial director for Ebony and Jet magazines in Chicago. “The fact that folks are squeezing this in between their day jobs is all the more a tribute to their character and dedication to this profession.”

Monroe and his committee filled the schedule of the conference distributing invitations to distinguished speakers and professionals. They whittled down a pool of 500 workshop proposals to approximately 100 of the most relevant and non-overlapping workshops. They also organized various discussion panels, the presidential candidates’ forum and a media showcase and career expo of more than 400 recruiters and exhibitors.

Hosting a convention of this magnitude is no cheap feat. Monroe estimates the price tag totaled more than $4 million.

“What we have to do is put on a terrific convention, but we have to keep in mind the cost,” said Ciara, managing editor at WTKR and a columnist for Mix Magazine. “We do this by being conservative in our approach and relying on sponsorships, fundraising and the alliances.”

To offset expenses, UNITY Executive Director Onica Makwakwa and her committee sought sponsorships, spending hours on the phone persuading companies to sponsor events, receptions and guest panels. Hotels, airlines and rental companies agreed to offer special rates and discounts to attendees.

While the UNITY organization handled the convention’s logistics, the individual journalism associations worked to generate the content and shouldered a large portion of the advertising burden.

In addition to the workshops, the associations organized events such as a speech by Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, a fiesta, an evening of karaoke, a film festival and a 5K walk/run.

Ultimately, the associations provided the large number of attendees by promoting the convention on their Web sites, in e-mails and at local chapter gatherings. For example, NAHJ recruited attendees at a “Pre-UNITY Registration Party” earlier this year in Chicago. Makwakwa and UNITY President Karen Lincoln Michel were among the 50 attendees.

“Such events work because they allow journalists on the local level to share what they’ve gotten out of UNITY in the past and what they look forward to getting from UNITY this July in Chicago,” Michel wrote in a recent UNITY column. “It is important simply to connect with each other and build excitement on a regional level.”

Members also contributed to the advertising endeavor. Joe Grimm, a UNITY convention veteran and member of all four participating journalism associations, started a group on the social networking Web site Facebook last year for people attending the convention. The group grew to more than 700 members, who used the forum to network and advertise the event to others.

“It’s a good way to attract people, remind people and encourage people to be there,” said Grimm, a recruiter for Gannett and the Detroit Free Press. “I hope they think, ‘If all those people are going to be there, I definitely want to be there.’”

topic: UNITY Convention
tags: UNITY Convention

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 9:43 am and is filed under Online Multimedia, UNITY Convention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.