“Are you stuck on replay?” asks marketing blogger Katya Andresen. “Do you do the same things, the same way, over and over?”

Up until this year, I might have said yes. But I’m fortunate to now be surrounded by new colleagues here at SIIA. So policy guy David LeDuc and I had a long talk about mobile on Monday—he says the future is coming fast; then CFO Tom Meldrum gave me new ways to organize the SIPAwards this morning; and events director Emily Ruf helps me promote the upcoming SIPA 2013 Conference in new ways. (Sessions are going to be incredibly stimulating and refreshed this year. I hope you can join us!)

But, of course, not everyone gets to be surrounded by new people every year. How do they get un-stuck? Andresen has four ways, and then I will add three more from recent articles:

1. “Get another view into your organization.” She suggests calling someone on the outside—a good customer perhaps—and see how they’re feeling about your company. Or “visit a front-lines staff member and ask [him or her] what’s new or different these days. I get so many good ideas from our customer service and success teams, for example.”

2. “Sign up for blogs, e-newsletters or other media that track big trends,” she writes. This is tricky given our time commitments. I would amend this to say, trade a couple blogs you read now—except for this column, of course—for a couple new forums. Writes Andresen: “I read a lot on mobile technology, the payments industry, social media and start ups so I can think about how broader trends might disrupt my work in exciting or concerning ways.”

3. “Go have lunch with a really smart person who doesn’t work at your organization.” This is great on many levels. First of all, it’s making you take lunch somewhere besides your desk. Second, it makes you get out of the office. Third, you’re getting fresh ideas. “Most of my ideas come from conversations with other people—rather than my own isolated mind,” she writes.

4. “Take an online course with a brilliant thinker.” One advantage SIPA members now have is access to all SIIA events. For instance, next Wednesday, May 1, you can sign up for a free webcast titled Platform Publishing: Your Ticket to Better, Faster, Cheaper (Content & Media) Products. Marc Strohlein, Principal, Agile Business Logic, will be the presenter. On May 8, Dan Brown will moderate the latest SIPC webinar titled Syndicated Research – How to Sell Your Content Multiple Times to Multiple People.

5. Attend a conference. The SIPA 2013 Conference, June 5-7, at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C. is almost here!  Open your world up to new people, new solutions and new ideas. (The session All About Email has just been assigned to Dawn Lewis of OPIS and consultant Jeanne Jennings, both great speakers)  It truly is an investment in yourself and your company.

6. Change your meeting routine. Everyone’s time clock is different—mix it up a little. Says Marcus Ryu, CEO of Guidewire: “We have people make a commitment to their colleagues by saying, ‘In the next day, I will achieve this.’ That is all the motivation you need. You don’t actually need any other kind of managerial layer on top of that. Just the simple fact that I have spoken in front of my colleagues and said I was going to do something…”

7. Try a new sales approach. Are you presenting your story in the context of your audience? Says Kon Leong, CEO of ZL Technologies: “If they’re in the deep part of the forest, you’ve got to talk the language of the deep forest. Salesmanship is more like a language unto itself. There is no right or wrong. It’s what you make of it, and what’s black can be gray, and what’s gray can be white. It depends on your framework. The challenge is to share the same framework so that you’re seeing the same page in the same way.”

Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

There are impressive resumes, and then there’s Terry Jones’. He founded Travelocity.com in 1996 and led the company as CEO until May 2002. He also helped to found Kayak.com and still serves as its chairman of the board- in addition to being the managing principal of On, Inc, a consultancy he co-founded to help companies in their transition to the digital economy.

Jones (pictured here) has written a new book titled On Innovation. One of the themes is listening to young people in your company. That’s interesting because I was just emailing with David Neinstein, director, operations, at bisnow Media. He is a young guy at a young company, and spoke of innovation when I interviewed him earlier this year. “We want to constantly innovate and that held true to hiring practices as well,” Neinstein told me. He went on to describe a series of tests they came up with that mirrors a typical day. “So our interview is designed to mimic reality of the job and increase the odds of a fit.”

Neinstein’s new process was successful, and Jones wouldn’t be surprised. “The future for any business today depends entirely on its ability to innovate, and the youngest adults, ‘the idea generation,’ know that,” says Jones. “The millennials are the group known for pioneering new ideas, rethinking processes, end-running hierarchies and solving problems by doing what simply makes sense to them. We need to listen to them; they’re the innovators!”

SIPA 2013, June 5-7, in Washington, D.C., will have two key sessions on this topic, titled Breakthrough Product Innovation. Part I will deal with Idea Generation & Vetting and be led by Dan Brown and Stephanie Eidelman. Part II will focus on Turning Ideas into Real Products and feature Brown and Ed Coburn.

A global survey of adults born after 1982 found that only 26% believe their bosses are doing enough to encourage innovation. The study by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, published in January, reported 78% believe innovation is crucial for growing businesses. Jones says there are definite steps business leaders can and should take to ensure their company is hearing employees’ ideas, recognizing opportunities, and ensuring a clear path to innovation.

1. Build a culture of experimentation. Not every project will succeed but you can’t learn from mistakes if you don’t allow them to happen. The corollary: Always analyze what went wrong. Why didn’t it work? One fast and easy way to experiment is to test options out online. Whether it’s polling customers, measuring which approach gets the best response, or allowing a segment of your customer base to test drive a new tool, the results can be invaluable.

2. Kill projects not people. In many companies, people stop offering up ideas and volunteering for projects because the punishment for failure is greater than the reward for success. Lunch with the boss or a $100 bonus do not compensate for the risk of being demoted or fired, or suffering a tarnished reputation. When a project fails in a company with a culture of experimentation, the first thing you should do is say, “Bob, what would you like to work on now?”

3. Break through the “Bozone layer.” Some of the greatest ideas for innovation will come from the employees on the front lines—those in direct contact with customers or production. But their ideas may never float up to the executive suite because it may be too risky for middle managers to experiment. While you’re turning the culture around, find ways to reach down to the front lines to solicit ideas. Implement them and reward the contributors with a big, public shout out—which will help you start changing the culture.

4. Install “sensors” to pick up customers’ ideas. Don’t just look to employees for innovation–learn from your customers. They have ideas for new products and new uses for existing products, and their customer service complaints are a fertile source of ideas for improvement. Listen! Social media or a forum on the company website is a good sensor for picking up ideas; For customer service complaints, Travelocity installed a lobby phone booth where anyone in the company could listen in on customer service calls. Once a month, everyone was expected to provide feedback on at least two of those calls, and suggest an improvement to eliminate similar future calls.

Attend SIPA 2013 and learn more about innovation!

Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

Right now, you can still put out great content, sell it through webinars, newsletters, ezines and more increasingly memberships and site licenses, and have your audience view it on their office PC. But one advantage I now have is that I sit at the office of the Software & Information Industry Association. I can stroll down the hall and speak with, say, David LeDuc, the senior director, of public policy for SIIA. (He will be speaking at the SIPA 2013 Conference, June 5-7 in Washington, D.C.—now just a month and a half away!—with Keith Kupferschmid, SIIA general counsel.)

If you are not working on your mobile delivery, you need to get there, advises LeDuc. “The landscape is changing dramatically—it’s moving really fast,” he told me. “Sales of PCs are falling off a cliff; people just aren’t buying them anymore.” He said, yes, that may affect B2C more in the short term, “but you really need to skate to where the puck is going to be. And we know where that is—mobile.

“You need to think like an Internet company,” he added. “Because of the tablet, I’m looking for new types of content,” beyond the traditional newspaper. (See number 2 below.) Don’t get comfortable, he warned. “As I said, everything is just moving really fast.” That speed is why you must attend live conferences. In the office, we can bury our heads in work and feel like things are okay. But at SIPA 2013, your head will be met head on by new technology, new thinking, conversations with peers, and best practices—all crucial stuff.

I just read a post from the Poynter site by Tom Rosenstiel—the executive director of the American Press Institute—titled “New studies offer 5 ways publishers can capitalize on mobile trends now.” He references a report from Adobe Digital Index that global websites are now getting more traffic from tablets than smart¬phones. Given that and LeDuc’s warnings, here’s a quick recap of Rosenstiel’s five ways to make mobile more meaningful.

1. “Move aggressively to mobile immediately”—don’t wait for revenue to materialize. Americans own 50 million tablets and close to two-thirds of those owners use the devices for news.

2. “Mobile [especially tablets] deepens engagement.” This “adds to your brand not threatens it,” Rosenstiel writes. Engagement means more opportunities for monetization. People also seem to enjoy reading longer pieces on tablets and consume content in a more multisensory way.

3. “Think app — especially for the phone. Four out of every five minutes in mobile is spent on apps rather than on the browser-based Web.” He argues that now is the time to get on the limited real estate of mobile home pages.

4. “Consumers turn to ‘task-specific’ apps, not brand portals. Build apps around tasks, make them easy to use.”

5. “Content must match the strengths and time of day for each platform.” Rosenstiel dispels the platform agnostic argument. “The apps and the content should match how and when people use them,” he writes. If tablets are used most after the workday, then that content should be more analytical.

It’s still really all about engagement. Get them engaged, figure out how to monetize, and optimize campaigns across platforms. Concludes comScore: “Those who fail to devise an effective multi-platform strategy will likely be left behind.” LeDuc might put it more strongly. Hear him and many, many others—including a session titled Case Studies: What’s Working on Mobile & Tablet—at SIPA 2013.

Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

Here are three keynotes at the upcoming SIPA 2013 Conference, June 5-7, at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C. that will give you inside access that even a press pass couldn’t do!

1. Yesterday, I wrote about the tablet onslaught and that publishers need to work on their mobile delivery. Joe McCambley, co-founder of The Wonderfactory, will address some of the how in his keynote. “First and foremost [tablets] allow you like never before to do work that is actually useful to the customers,” he told DirectMarketingNews in a recent video interview. “There have been 7 billion apps that have been downloaded at about $5 an app. That’s a $35 billion market that didn’t exist. What consumers are telling us by downloading those apps is if you entertain me, if you help me, I’m going to come to you and give you money. I also think there’s an opportunity for advertisers to learn from that lesson. Instead of just trying to break through the clutter, get messages out there and shout at people, you can actually help people.

“The second thing is aesthetically the things you can do on a tablet that you can’t do on the web are amazing. It really gives us the chance to differentiate ourselves. It also encompasses the entire purchase model. You can do everything from awareness to action, all within that one device. We never really had that before from an advertising standpoint. Marketers are standing on the sidelines now wondering whether to invest. As more device makers come out, it will give it that critical mass…The biggest question is once that critical mass is reached, will there be any industry where it doesn’t work. I don’t think so.”
Joe McCambley, Co-Founder, The Wonderfactory, will deliver a keynote address on Thursday, June 6 at 8:30 a.m.

2. Trying a thing is critical, the editors of The Christian Science Monitor told an SIIA audience recently. You need fortitude to make it through the trial process. That process was a huge switch to “digital first” for the venerable publication. Jonathan Wells, managing publisher, and John Yemma, editor, will be coming to SIPA 2013 to talk more about this eye- and opportunity-opening change. The critical success factors, according to Yemma, are having: the right technologies; the right people—you’re changing how they approach business; and the right customer products.

Yemma said that they moved from a silo organization—one where talented people were doing their own thing—to a collaborative one, where people talk to each other and work through ethical dilemmas. They also moved from a one-way organization to one with partnerships with customers and figuring out what will serve them best. “Expect resistence,” Yemma said. “You need to hear criticism; empathize but don’t stop. And persistently invest everyone in success. Look at metrics on a daily basis. You want everyone on board. Find markets that will pay for your knowledge.”
Jonathan Wells, Managing Publisher, and John Yemma, Editor, The Christian Science Monitor, will deliver the Thursday, June 6, lunchtime keynote.

3. David Hawkings has been covering Washington politics for 25 years. He was managing editor of CQ Weekly, edited CQ’s Politics in America and, most recently, authored the CQ Roll Call Daily Briefing. SIPA 2013 attendees will be very fortunate to have him as a moderator for a keynote session with Joshua B. Bolten, Former White House Chief of Staff and Michael D. McCurry, former White House press secretary. Wrote Hawkings yesterday after Sunday’s national air traffic delays: “…none of the genuine or imagined worries or annoyances about the FAA furloughs or any of the other line items will have any tangible effect. That’s because, beyond the bipartisan distaste for the sequester’s consequences, there is no more agreement than there’s ever been about what to do instead. The depth of the cuts are locked in place through September. Even if the big long shot comes through and a budget deal becomes part of raising the debt ceiling in July, at best the caps starting next year would be eased just enough to take away some of the most politically toxic sting…”
SIPA 2013 attendees will be given an incredible glimpse into inside Washington from Hawkings, Bolten and McCurry, Friday, June 7, 8:45 a.m.

Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

SIIA and SIPA today announced five high-profile keynote events for the 37^th annual SIPA conference, to be held June 5-7 in Washington, D.C. The three-day event is an important gathering for information industry leaders who are reinventing their business models in a time of significant change.

Emerging technologies, dynamic social media realities and evolving business models are changing the publishing industry.  The theme of “Pathways to Publishing for Profit” will drive all of the keynote presentations at SIPA 2013, where the following government and industry leaders will discuss opportunities to grow and innovate:

• Former White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and former White House Press Secretary Michael D. McCurry will be joined by CQ Roll Call Senior Editor David Hawkings for a candid discussion about the state of the economy, pressing issues on Capitol Hill and expectations for President Obama’s second term.

• John Yemma and Jonathan Wells, editor and managing publisher, respectively, of The Christian Science Monitor, will speak about their successful journey towards becoming the world’s first “digital first” news organization and their efforts to leverage editorial assets to develop new products.
• Joe McCambley, co-founder and creative director of The Wonderfactory, will share his vision about the future of digital publishing.

• Terry Waters, CEO of Yankee Group – a market research firm focused on digital mobility – will present his firm’s latest findings about mobile trends.

Other highlights of the conference include more than 30 breakout sessions across five  topical tracks, the annual SIPAwards honoring the year’s best editorial performances and products, and the BrainSlam, an opportunity for teams to brainstorm solutions to real-world publishing problems and pitch their solutions to a panel of publishing experts.

Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

1. Copyright protection remains a huge issue for publishers. The SIPA 2013 Conference, June 5-7, in Washington, D.C., will fully address how you can best protect your content and monitor who is reading it. One of the key speakers is Andrew Elston. He runs iCopyright which provides innovative digital tools that enable content creators to profit, promote and protect their valuable content. Their blog is worth taking a look at. Recent articles have covered Fighting Content Theft, How to Copyright a Blog in Three Easy Steps and How Writers, Freelancers and Publishers Can Profit From the Meltwater Decision. Joining him will be Andrea Broadbent from McGraw-Hill—an expert on content licensing—and Angus Robertson, editor of Robertson Advisers, LLC. How do you extend your content into new audiences and new platforms without cannibalizing your core products and services? What strategies have proven results?
Stretch Your Content to the Limit: Rules, Risks and ROI in Content Licensing, Thursday, June 6, 9:30 a.m.

2. Lesley Ellen Harris, copyright lawyer, educator and author, edits The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter and blogs on copyright issues at Copyrightlaws.com. She will lead the session Copyright for Publishers and deliver information that could be crucial to your future. (Definitely follow her on Twitter at #Copyrightlaws.) Wrote Harris earlier this year: “Fair use/dealing has its risk. The question is the amount of risk. You need to know your organization and its risk tolerance. Look at your risk tolerance on other issues. Your copyright compliance policy should fit within the realm of other organization-wide policies.”
Lesley Ellen Harris will deliver a bonus session titled Copyright for Publishers, Wednesday, June 5, at 2:10 p.m.

3. Stephanie Williford, CEO of EB Medicine, will team with Stephanie Eidelman, President & Publisher, insideARM.com & insidePatientFinance.com, for a power-packed session on business plans, a very important aspect of any business. This interactive workshop not only will provide tips and best practices for growing your business, but you’ll also walk away with the tools to create a customized one-page business plan for your organization that you can begin using immediately. A business plan is an essential roadmap for success, whether you are just starting out or have been around for a while. This living document generally projects 3-5 years ahead and outlines the route a company intends to take to grow revenues.
Strategy & Finance: Mastering the One-Page Business Plan, Wednesday, June 5, 3:30 p.m.

4. In a talk last year, Darrell Gunter provided six key steps to understanding the global marketplace: conduct a GAP analysis; establish a global strategy; create a performance dashboard; involve the entire team; tie to performance review program; and implement, review, reassess, reengage. Gunter is new to SIPA Conferences and comes just in time as an added spotlight becomes doing business globally. “We’re going to see a lot more applications that allow us to put content into context,” he said in a past SIIA talk. “…better research leads to new ideas, leads to new patents, new trademarks, and it leads to new businesses—which is what have to find in this new economy of ours or the new technologies.”
Darrell Gunter, CEO of Gunter Media Group, will speak on Using Technology & Analytics to Enhance Your Content, Wednesday, June 5, 3:30 p.m.

5. The early-morning roundtables can provide some of the best discussions of the Conference. Phil Ash, publisher of Capitol Information Group, will lead a discussion on SIPA Chapters, which currently include: Washington, D.C., New York, New England, Atlanta, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Maybe you want to join a chapter or help start one. This is the time. Helmut Graf, CEO of VNR in Germany, will lead an international roundtable at the same time. SIPA is hosting a Conference in London Sept. 23-25 and will be stepping up their international presence. Again, this will be a perfect chance to get more involved.
INFO Local: Chapter Leaders Roundtable and International Members Roundtable, Friday, June 7, 7:30 a.m.

Subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily for more specialized publishers industry news.

Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline

SIPA: What are you doing?
Valerie: Looking up someone. Thank goodness for LinkedIn.

A member just told me she’s getting more traffic from LinkedIn than Twitter.
It’s where the subscription business is right now. It drives audiences to your product.

It’s a long way from the days of postcards.
For some, snail mail marketing is still quite effective. But what we’ve seen over the last few years is a dramatic shift to marketing automation. Even direct email marketing is in decline. It’s clear the marketing industry is changing, and technology is much more prevalent in the field than ever before. As marketers, we are constantly asked to prove ROI for our initiatives. Like media as a whole, we have to continuously embrace new technologies that deliver results in a shorter amount of time.

Where did you start?
I began my career at Telecommunications Reports handling market research on what then was a little new tool called “the web.” We created the first online subscription service for the newsletter industry, and our clients were the “baby bells” like Bell South Telecom. After Telecommunications Reports, I went to Post Newsweek, an early Washington Post web venture. I headed up their online group, syndicated their content, and published Newsbytes.com. We had 22 reporters around the globe. Don Graham [then publisher of the Post] funded my new project, Washtech.com, and I moved over to WashingtonPost.com, under Chris Schroeder. I worked with the newspaper, magazine and web divisions. It was a delicate balance in those days. We mostly repurposed content from the print edition but my reporters wrote for the web. The highlight was when Katherine Graham came to visit. I just followed her around the whole time.

Sounds like you are an entrepreneur.
Definitely. I‘ve been fortunate to work in environments that encourage that. Creative workplaces help me to stay driven.

How did you get to CQ Roll Call?
I’ve known Meg Hargreaves since she was at LexisNexis. She recommended me for the position. I joined CQ Roll Call in January 2011, running advertising marketing. This past July we combined circulation and advertising marketing, which were functioning as separate groups, in a new, cohesive department that I am now head of.

How is your digital advertising? I’m hearing it’s a tough go.
Digital advertising doesn’t have the same economics as print advertising. When I first started in the business, several of us were pioneering the web strategy. We didn’t place high enough value on it at the beginning. It’s the only medium that you can truly measure. For example, no one asks you to rip an ad out of a newspaper and take it to the store and make a purchase, but with digital, we are being asked everyday how many clicks and what type of engagement the online ad is receiving. Even television can’t tie it into engagement like that.

Interesting. Hadn’t thought of it like that.
More and more, we’re able to provide deeper analytics. But we have to get smarter in how we get in the face of our readers—have to stop interrupting them. Behavioral, targeted economics will follow. The question is, how do we bring that online value up. It will eventually equal and surpass print. However, growing the audience is crucial to this process.

That leads us perfectly into your role of Audience Engagement Track Chair for SIPA 2013.
It’s going to be a great conference. Niche publishers have a big challenge: How do you use content to grow audience? How do you get them to amplify your message, tweet your story and discuss it among friends? When should you use Google Hangout? How do you get visitors to subscribe? You can always get a fly-by or a hit by Drudge, and it’s great when it happens. But you can’t count on that. The business side has to work closely with editorial to let them know who’s reading, how they are reading and how they are engaging with us. How many times do they visit and for how long?

Do you have a social media strategy?
In the last several years, social media has become integral in all aspects of marketing, whether its driving traffic or lead generation. CQ Roll Call has both a subscription service (CQ.com) and an open, free site (RollCall.com). Our reporters are tweeting constantly and Roll Call has over 140,000 followers. Twitter is the top traffic referral for RollCall.com. CQ.com is very different; the stories are behind paywalls, so the goal here is how do we drive leads and increase visibility for paid content?

How did your track develop?
The initial title was audience development, but the way marketing in media has changed, marketing really is now about audience engagement. You have all these legacy methods of marketing, such as lists, with the potential for a lot of churn; there is much information to churn. You have to try to find new lists and new ways to attract the user and create demand for your product. Email is becoming less effective as people are being bombarded. How can we reach people in today’s world? How do I engage them? How do we get them interested in what we’re covering? They can also inform you. The big piece is analytics; we have to be data driven and use appropriate tools to identify highly qualified leads.

How do we do that?
It’s not just traffic; it’s not just an increase in visitors. It’s how many pages, time on site, and where are the people coming from? We need to paint a picture of the journey and track their patterns. We need to work with folks in almost every department—i.e. the webmaster, editorial, sales. We’ve created six new blogs recently, and it’s not just young people blogging. Stu Rothenberg, Mort Kondracke, these are big names and long-time D.C. journalists. It’s a fallacy that online engagement is for young people only.

If Roll Call is all free, where do you get revenue?
Roll Call’s primary revenue is from advertising, sponsorships and subscriptions to print. It’s a slightly different product than CQ. Our philosophy is to get people to the site. The free site can also be used as a vehicle to drive leads for the paid subscription services. Marketing automation software lets us segment the audience that comes to Roll Call. We can then see what their interest level is. Do they look like a candidate for our premium services?

Sounds like the game has changed.
It has. Now it’s all about inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is the future. The technology is there. Inbound marketing allows you to find people who are searching for the types of products and services you provide. Potential clients are out there on apps, and we have to be really smart about capturing them. They may be searching for exactly what we have.

Great stuff. I’m ready for the Conference now!
We’re really going to have forward-thinking sessions. I can’t pretend I’m doing everything I want to do. That’s a never-ending list. But we’re doing a lot, and we’ll talk about it at the Conference.

Any of this keep you up at night?
Of course. I’ve had a lot of good mentors and bosses in my career who have allowed me to try new things. I want to make sure I’m doing that for my team as well, providing enough challenges and opportunities.

To be continued on June 5-7!

Subscribe to the SIPAlert Daily for more specialized publishers industry news.

Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline