SRCCON 2025 attendees in Memorial Hall preparing for the next set of sessions. (Photo by John Hernandez)

We came into SRCCON 2025 planning this year just hoping the conference would come together in the first place. This was the first year where Jessica and John fully organized the conference, and we weren’t sure it would come together in the same way without Ryan and Erika’s deeper involvement. That leadership transition at OpenNews happened during another harrowing year for news, politics, the communities we live in and the journalists we serve.
We set the scene here because although we came into SRCCON 2025 feeling anxious about what would happen, we walked away more energized by the experience than we could have imagined and more confident than ever in the community-building we do.

We always believed in the need for the space we created this year: The real work of progress can’t happen without collective deliberation, vulnerability and time we set aside at SRCCON. It’s a two-day escape to put our heads together and lean into the shared complexity and humanity of the situation we’re in.

We love that SRCCON sets itself apart with its attention to care, resilience and breaking the mold for how conferences work. One 2025 participant summed up our intentions nicely in their feedback, “As always, SRCCON is a gift of time and attention.”

“Usually, I consider it a good conference day if I connected with one person deeply enough to follow up – at SRCCON there’s 4-5 people each day with whom this happens.” — SRCCON 2025 participant

Our ambitions for SRCCON are fairly simple:

1. Build real connections
2. Spark ideas, big and small
3. Do it in a human, authentic way

When we asked attendees to tell us what they wanted to bring back to their workplace, the sessions they named in their feedback forms confronted the same journalistic challenges we saw in the call for participation forms people filled out to attend SRCCON in the first place. That “synergy” is amazing and intentional. It’s the reason why community reviewers help build the program and why we encourage participatory, interactive sessions. When a discussion hits home, when a SRCCON participant gets to chat deeply with a few people about something they’re confronting and walks away with connections, resources and the lightness of being that comes with knowing they’re not alone — that’s the backbone of the SRCCON model. It starts with the CFP forms, gets affirmed by reviewers, is channeled through session facilitators and ends with the effervescence of cool, brilliant journalists dreaming, working and hanging together.

“Isn’t it interesting, how many people say they feel tired or ‘good depleted’ on Friday afternoon? That’s because it’s so personal and important to us, so close to our hearts!” — SRCCON 2025 participant

But it’s hard to dream with the veil of shattered expectations and broken promises hanging over us — news avoidance, mistrust, layoffs, and a genuine authoritarian threat are just some of the things we’re all contending with. What’s the happy middle between despair and denial then? We’re looking for it at SRCCON. The reason we go up on stage and try to set an honest, open tone has everything to do with making our time together as productive as possible. It requires rejecting the expectation that we’re journalists first and humans second. Many participants mentioned how they appreciated the tone of our comments, especially at the opening of the conference, and we’re here to thank all SRCCON 2025 attendees for taking up that spirit in Minneapolis and at home. Being “good depleted” at the end of Friday at SRCCON has everything to do with embracing the reality that while we may be vulnerable alone, we’re still powerful together.

“The distinguishing feature of this conference vs. all others is its reflectiveness and adaptiveness to feedback over time. Great opportunity to get off the donor-/audience-/breaking-news-driven treadmill and take on the existential challenges of our work.” — SRCCON 2025 participant

And we’re going to keep working on it. Maybe our aspirations will always outpace our capacity, but we’re always looking to improve.

Some things we’re thinking about:

• How can we lift up even more diverse facilitators and emerging leaders?
• How can we connect all of you better without creating more work for you to make that happen?
• What new approaches should we take to existential threats and practical conundrums we face? (Side note: Unconference sessions seemed to be a hit!)
• How do we prevent the siloing of conversations that require cross-functional approaches?
• What mix of social sessions will make people comfortable enough to maybe forget work for a moment and just socialize?
• How can we improve the venue and session space so you can just dig into the discussions, exist in the moment and forget about anything else but the people and topic in front of you?
• Is our venue in Minneapolis still the right space for the environment we’re trying to cultivate? Should we consider somewhere else?

Anything else we need to consider? We’re already looking at possibilities for 2026 — so let us know if you want to invest some time, funds, bandwidth or additional feedback into next year’s version of the event! Email us at srccon@opennews.org if you’re interested in supporting our next SRCCON gathering.

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With all that said, thank you for another wonderful year of SRCCON. Stay connected with us in the meantime! Check out our community calls, look out for scholarship opportunities in a few months, say hello at other journalism events and subscribe to the newsletter to stay in touch. We’re starting to move on our Press Forward project, “Emergency Mode for News,” so keep an eye out for more chances to connect via that work.

We’ll see you at SRCCON 2026!