Danielle Coffey, the News Media Alliance's senior vice president of strategic initiatives, will explain the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act at the SNPA-Inland Annual Meeting in Chicago, and provide an update on its progress through Congress.

"This is a critical time for news publishers to invest in reporters and resources necessary for quality journalism," Coffey said. "Verifiable, fact-based reporting is essential to an informed democracy, and without a sustainable business model that underpins newsgathering, consumers will be harmed and click-bait will prevail. This is why we support an antitrust safe harbor for news publishers to collectively negotiate for a better deal with the tech platforms."

The Oct. 6-8 meeting in Chicago is the launch of the new association formed by the merger of SNPA and the Inland Press Association. Here are a dozen more reasons to attend:

Program details

Companies that do business with newspapers are encouraged to reserve their tabletop exhibit space or other sponsorships for the SNPA-Inland Annual Meeting as soon as possible. Deadlines are approaching for listings in the printed program.

The first Annual Meeting of the new association being formed by the merger of SNPA and Inland Press Association will feature industry innovators who are finding new business models and solutions in the print (and digital) world. Join us Oct. 6-8 in Chicago!

The collective experience being shared by industry veterans, media experts and rising stars makes this a meeting that will be valuable to publishers as well as their key department heads. Take advantage of the team discount offered to newspapers that send five or more employees ... or discounted first-time rates for staff members who have never before attended an SNPA or Inland annual meeting.

Click here for a preview of several conference sessions.

The Family Owners & Next Generation Leadership Conference Oct. 4-5 – the first after the formal merger of SNPA and Inland Press Association – promises to offer more opportunities for networking than ever before.

The strength of Family Owners conferences has always been in confronting challenges and finding solutions within the participating families themselves.

• Walter Hussman reports on the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's bold move to convert all its subscribers to digital subscribers.
• Recruitment guru Laurie Kahn on what newspapers need to do to assemble a team of sales superstars.
• The Post and Courier reveals results from the Google News Initiative – literally days after its conclusion.
• News from Washington on the newspaper industry's fight to get a fair share of revenue from Facebook and Google.Springs.

When retired judge Frederic Rutberg and three other investors bought The Berkshire Eagle in western Massachusetts and three sister dailies in Vermont, he set what seemed like an audacious goal for papers that had suffered relentless cost-cutting under Digital First Media ownership.

"In 2016, new ownership announced its goal to make The Eagle the finest community newspaper in America," Rutberg wrote in a column earlier this year, "and we would do so employing a rather novel strategy: By improving the paper and its websites, we will attract more readers, which will guarantee sustainability for our staff, our readers and our community."

Three years later, the strategy is working.

The Eagle newsroom has been staffed up, with several of the 40 journalists concentrating on investigative reporting. Subscriptions are up and the community is responding to a product of local ownership focused on local news and issues.

Rutberg will tell the story of The Eagle's renaissance this October in Chicago during the first Annual Meeting after the formal merger of the Inland Press Association and SNPA.

The Eagle session fits well with the rest of the program that is coming together for the Oct. 6-8 Annual Meeting. One theme is emerging as sessions are added to the agenda: Strategies for sustainability – financially and journalistically.

The new association that will be formed by the merger of SNPA and Inland Press Association is honored by the commitment of some major sponsors for its Oct. 6-8 annual meeting in Chicago.

While the discussions of new business models will doubtless grab the headlines of the Joint Annual Meeting, the agenda will also offer the kind of practical, real-life information that have made conferences at both associations so valuable.

View photos from the 2019 Mega-Conference on the SNPA Facebook page.

SNPA's monthly P2P video conference calls for publishers and department heads provided members with more than a $1,000,000 in revenue and cost-cutting ideas in 2018 ... and more programs are coming in 2019!