I'm delighted to let you know that the Online News Association board has voted to open up the board election process to non-professional members.

Starting this fall, with the election for the 2009 board, associate, academic and student members of the Online News Association now will be eligible to vote and run for ONA's board of directors.

ONA was founded in 1999 by online media professionals with the primary purpose of serving professional online journalists. Since then, we have grown significantly, with more than 1,200 members now.

While we remain primarily focused on the needs of working journalists, we also recognize that the board should better reflect the membership as a whole. So we have modified the bylaws to provide for the election of up to three non-professional members to the board.

In the next year, we have many exciting initiatives planned, from new events to beefed up our member benefits. We are planning a spectacular conference Sept. 11-13 at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C., this year. And next year we will be celebrating the association's 10th anniversary.

If you have any suggestions for benefits or activities you would like ONA to offer -- or would like to help out -- please feel free to
contact me (jdube@journalists.org) or Executive Director Lori Schwab (lschwab@journalists.org).

I hope to see all of you at this year's conference in Washington, D.C., in September.

Cheers,

Jonathan Dube
President, Online News Association
jdube@journalists.org