The NJ News Commons is hosting their first-ever national journalism conference this Thursday and Friday at Montclair State University.

The “Innovating the Local News Ecosystem Conference” will “explore the major trends and innovations impacting local media,” according to the event info page on Eventbrite.com:

The conference will begin Thursday, April 24, at 7 p.m., with a reception and keynote at the DuMont Television Center on the campus of Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J. On Friday, April 25, media leaders from across the country will gather at the Montclair State University Conference Center for an exciting day of workshops, panels and supersessions. Featured speakers include Merrill Brown, founding editor of MSNBC.com and director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University; Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism; Steven D. Waldman, serial entrepreneur and author of the FCC report on the Future of Media; and Michelle McLellan, founder of the Block by Block Community News Summit. Speakers include journalists and technologists from the New York Times, Propublica, Buzzfeed, Advance Local, Digital First Media, WNYC, GoLocal, Oakland Local, RebelMouse, NowThisNews, Meograph, SocialSign.in and more.

The conference sessions will focus on exploring current trends and issues in local and hyperlocal journalism.

Some of the scheduled session titles include, “The New Normal,” a look at the current local media landscape; “Beyond Banners: New Revenue Streams for Local Startups”; the “Information Needs of Communities”; “Can Local Scale?”; “Finding Common Ground,” a look at collaborative experiments; “Beyond Content: Building Audience and Engagement”; “Sharing the Scoop: Making Collaborative Experiments Work”; “The Network Effect: The Future of Local Advertising”; along with several others.

The full conference schedule can be viewed here.

Muckgers was one of the seven recipients of the “Grow and Strengthen” micro-grants awarded to local and hyper-local news startups by the NJ News Commons in 2013, and we have been attending montly peer-to-peer group sessions at Montclair State University ever since.

As the consolidation of the national news ecosystem continues, the importance of local and hyperlocal news media cannot be overstated. Conferences like these are a valuable resource for those interested in forming and establishing news and media startups at the local level. More independent news outlets means more a more diverse set of viewpoints and perspectives on local media. As FreePress.net puts it:

A handful of companies already controls almost everything we see, read and hear. But there’s one rule that helps keep consolidation in check: No one company is allowed to own a newspaper and broadcast outlets in the same market. But corporations like the Tribune Company are lobbying the Federal Communications Commission to remove that restriction. Local media monopolies would lead to further newsroom cuts and would prompt outlets to rely more heavily on companies like Journatic. Preserving a competitive local media landscape is crucial to preserving real local reporting.

The conference is free, but both the opening night and full-day sessions require prior registation via Eventbrite.com.

There will also be a livestream of the conference via NJVid.com, which you can watch here.