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A Look Inside the Online News Association

The 2010 ONA conference may be over, but you can stay connected all year round using the membership directory at journalists.org.

Use an interactive map and dashboard to find out where the ONA innovators are
and what they are talking about online.

About the Viz

This visualization or viz for short was put together during the Saturday session of the ONA conference in DC. With the help of a few key people, I tracked down the executive director of the ONA, Jane McDonnell, to ask for her permission to use this data.

The viz features an interactive map that is broken out into U.S. geographic regions. You can also use your mouse to hover over a circle to see membership stats or use the mouse to drag and highlight states and the number of members will appear in the table on the right.

Below the map, you’ll find an interactive bar graph that displays the number of members who belong to the ONA’s regional discussion groups. And at the bottom of the viz, you’ll see a snapshot of members broken out by membership type.

About the Data

I used the ONA’s member search tool to scrape aggregate data on membership type, regional discussion groups, home state and hot topics of online discussion. The data come solely from the number of search results returned from my queries.

• View and share the scraped data here: http://bit.ly/ONAdata
• Use this link to share the viz: http://bit.ly/ONAviz
• Embed the viz by right-clicking and copying this code or use the share button to copy or customize the code.

Remember to stay connected and I’ll see you next year in Boston for ONA11!

Anthony Calabrese is journalist based in Washington, D.C., who specializes in data visualization and digital storytelling. Most recently, he worked as a web producer for the State of the USA where he wrote about measuring the nation’s progress. Previously, he worked as a data researcher on the Best Colleges and Best Graduate Schools publications at U.S. News & World Report. He holds a master’s degree in interactive journalism from American University and is an active member of the Online News Association.  

You can connect on LinkedIn, find him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter @2mrw