The ONA hosted discussions and seminars about online news on opposite sides of the country recently

In San Francisco, ONA members organized an evening event called "The State of Online Journalism" on Sept. 21. About 70 people attended -- including folks from Yahoo News, Stanford University, UC-Berkeley, San Francisco State University, KQED, Wire News, Knight Ridder Digital, CBS MarketWatch, SF Gate, San Jose Mercury News, Associated Press, C|Net and ZDNet.

The organizing committee was Michael Fitzgerald, freelance writer; Jeff Peline, C|Net; Neil Chase, CBS MarketWatch; Tim Olsen, KQED; Alison Macondary, Wired News; and Bruce Koon, Knight Ridder Digital. The evning was hosted by C|Net. C|Net, Knight Ridder Digital and CBS MarketWatch sponsored wine and food.

Among the highlights of the evening was OJA winner (commentary) Mark Fiore's talk about how broadband has made his animated political cartoons more accessible. He recently signed on AOL as a client.

Niall Kennedy did a great write up of the evening on his blog. The Napsterization blog offers another take on the event.

Meanwhile, in Washington about 80 professionals and students attended the first regional session of the Online News Association at American University’s School of Communication Thursday.

The experiences shared by the eight presenting journalists and questions asked by the audience provided insights into lessons learned in a year in the digital trenches.

Again, a sincere thank you to the evening's participants for their time and perspectives, as well as co-sponors, USATODAY.com, washingtonpost.com, The American University School of Communication, and the Society of Professional Journalists, D.C. pro chapter