Seeds of Innovation 2025 Virtual conference

Seeds of Innovation Sessions

Can't wait until June for professional development? Want to maximize your conference experience? Seeds of Innovation brings the expertise of the PMJA community directly to your desk with our new series of virtual sessions running from March through mid-May.

These focused, practical workshops complement our in-person conference by exploring specialized topics that couldn't fit into our packed three-day Kansas City agenda. From creating engaging podcast events to leveraging investigative resources, each session offers immediately applicable skills for your newsroom.

The best part? These sessions are completely free for all PMJA members and anyone registered for #PMJA2025. It's our way of ensuring everyone in our community can access valuable professional development, whether you're joining us in Kansas City or participating virtually.

Register for any or all of these sessions and plant the seeds for your newsroom's innovation!

Finding Good Audio for Investigative Stories

Investigative journalism doesn't always have good audio options for its broadcast component. The reporting can inherently be document and data heavy. And when it comes to the audio feature, anything used has to be economic because it's impossible to squeeze a 3,000-word digital piece into a four-minute segment. This session will cover tips and tricks on creating a good audio story to accompany the reporting that may be heavy in records or numbers and lacking in audio-rich scenes. That way, you can always have an answer when your editor asks: "What audio do you have?"

Presenter: Kris Husted, KCUR

May 1, 2025 

1 p.m. ET

Register Now

How to Adapt a Story for Broader Audiences

Do you have a story you think is of interest beyond your local community – or should be? We’ll talk about ways that framing, sourcing and reporting can make your story relevant for audiences locally, regionally and nationally.

Presenters: TBD

May 15, 2025 

1 p.m. ET

Register Now

Session Archives

Don't Overthink It: How to Pull Off Engaging IRL Podcast Events

It’s never been more important to engage with your audience outside of the content you’re producing, but what if you could do it without reinventing the wheel? KCUR Studios’ podcast, A People’s History of Kansas City, has been quickly adapting their podcast scripts into engaging events to great success.

In 2024, an episode about the Kansas City creation of Hydrox cookies (the original Oreo) spurred them to host a community storytelling event, complete with a taste test and vote of Hydrox vs. Oreos. It was so popular, they hosted a second event -- and both sold out. The additional engagement helped the episode become one of the most popular episodes of the year.

We’ll break it all down:
- How to turn a podcast script into a live event script
- How to make a compelling audiovisual presentation to accompany your talk
- Ways to engage your audience throughout your event
- How to best time an event around a podcast episode launch

Trust us: Your podcast listening audience and your event audience are two different audiences, but you can successfully serve both with similar content!

Presenter: Mackenzie Martin, KCUR

March 20, 2025 

1 p.m. ET

View the Recording

Using Marshall Project Datasets and Reporting Tools for Your Criminal Justice Stories

The Marshall Project has been sharing its national datasets and other reporting tools with local journalists to jumpstart valuable criminal justice coverage. We aim to save local newsrooms time and resources by offering data trends, story ideas, and sourcing leads for them to build upon with their local expertise.

TMP’s story toolkits include free illustrations and embeddable graphics that can be customized to show state-level trends. In this session, we’ll explain how to interpret the data from our latest toolkit on prison staffing trends, including how to localize your audio story, and we’ll discuss techniques for investigating deaths behind bars, including what “receipts” to track down through records requests. Accessing these resources will allow local journalists to hold power to account and shine a light on a criminal justice system that affects over one hundred million people in the US.

Presenters:

David Eads, The Marshal Project

Shannon Heffernan, The Marshall Project

Anna Flag, The Marshall Project

Brittany Hailer, The Marshall Project

April 3, 2025 

1 p.m. ET

View the Recording

Think Like a News Entrepreneur

Most of our newsrooms could use another person or two to supplement what we do, but the money is not in the budget to hire anyone. Where do we find extra resources? Where should we be looking and how should we be thinking when it comes to adding people or equipment? Where are the potential challenges? We'll bring in a speaker or two and ask our audience to share their experiences with outside support for local newsrooms.

Presenters:

Doug Nadvornick, Spokane Public Radio

Michael Arnold, KUNC

Megan Kamerick, KUNM

April 17, 2025 

1 p.m. ET

View the Recording