The puzzle table at SRCCON 2026 was a hit. (Photo Credit: Jessica Morrison)

What makes SRCCON different?

Why do journalists and technologists leave SRCCON saying things like “[SRCCON] surprised me in the most beautiful way,” calling the event “the most thoughtfully designed journalism conference I’ve ever attended,” and feeling energized about the future of journalism?

Here’s a thought: Journalists deserve to receive the same kind of care from the industry that they pour into their communities. We’re not used to that, and when it happens, it’s a shock to the system.

But care is baked into every element of SRCCON, in spite of an industry that has trained us to be unfeeling.

We were taught that to do our jobs as journalists ethically, we have to remain objective. And boy, did we ever knock that assignment out of the park. We became so neutral that the best of us would choose silence before we would have an opinion, we relegated our personalities to film and television writers, and we ceased to exist at all in our communities beyond screens and bylines. We hide our humanity behind our principles, and then wonder why we don’t feel seen.

Participants gathered in Memorial Hall during SRCCON 2026. (Photo Credit: Lisa Rowan)

That’s why SRCCON feels so different. We convene the field from within with care, and we trust participants to show up fully and create the gathered experience together with us. But we don’t leave how it feels to chance.

Our work as organizers looks like:

• A call for participation form that asks you to reflect before you buy a ticket.
• A session review process that asks community members to bring their expertise and POV to the table, in order to express a robust opinion.
• A venue that inspires, with snacks and meals that encourage togetherness.
• A program with lengthy breaks that anticipate long conversations, a trip to the restroom, a quick call to home or the office, a chance to walk outside, or anything you might need before moving on to the next session.
• Sponsors that understand the impact of OpenNews and SRCCON, and align with our shared values.
• Prioritizing travel stipends and scholarship tickets that allow us to include participants who might not be able to otherwise join.
• A preference for solutions-oriented, participatory workshops rather than a lone speaker or a prestige panel on a main stage.
• Thoughtfully matching co-facilitators who support each other and bring different experiences and perspectives to session design.
• Recruiting and coordinating community volunteers who staff our registration desk and support facilitators as peers during their sessions
• An invitation to make room and include (the Pac-Man Rule), to take breaks, and to pace yourself
• Encouraging cross-functional relationships within newsrooms and the news industry, but also interdisciplinary coalition building within technology, civic information, academic, public health, and arts spaces

It’s unusual at a journalism conference to focus so much on the journalists themselves alongside craft, but we know two things: the people doing the work of journalism matter, and people who are supported and shown care are more capable of supporting and showing care to others. That impact is hard to measure, but we also know that SRCCON influences how participants show up for the audiences and communities they serve because they tell us.

“I keep coming back to SRCCON because this has become one of my surest sources every year of inspiration and recharge,” said Cordelia Yu, a long-time OpenNews community member and current advisory council member, during the opening session on Day 1 of SRCCON 2026 in Minneapolis.

Looking back at SRCCON 2016, this gathering has always emphasized radical care. (Photo Credit: Emma Carew Grovum)

My SRCCON story is like many others: I found SRCCON a decade ago when I was entering a phase of my journalism career that felt less linear and more confusing. I met a whole conference full of people who were thinking about and making moves to change how we do our work — infusing care and intentionality into hiring, onboarding, project management, team development, and all the work that goes on behind the scenes. I returned year after year, feeling inspired and heading home with a head full of ideas to try out in my newsroom as I moved from reporter to project editor to building and leading a newsroom product team.

A rural newsroom founder and first-time SRCCON participant wrote in an email, “This was the first conference I’ve been to that actually does what conferences are supposed to do — people working together in a room, not talking at each other from a stage.”

This is the OpenNews way. See you at SRCCON 2027!

OpenNews is celebrating 15 years of connecting journalists and technologists as peers who collaborate to solve complex problems while caring a whole lot about how that work gets done. Help us keep that work going with a $15 gift to OpenNews that funds peer support, shared knowledge, and a more inclusive future for journalism.