Lightning talks are a series of quick, focused presentations — roughly seven minutes long, each followed by seven minutes of open Q&A on the topic.

Growth and scale

Jim Brady of Spirited Media will talk about growing from Billy Penn in Philadelphia to a company that includes The Incline in Pittsburgh and Denverite in Colorado, and what he's doing to stay "authentically local" as he scales the business.

East Lansing Info's citizen journalists

Publisher Alice Dreger will talk about how the Michigan nonprofit enlisted an army of citizen journalists in local coverage.

Journalism's class problem

John S. Knight fellow Heather Bryant will talk about the gap between many journalists' socioeconomic background and experience and the readers they're not relating to.

The journalist as salesperson

Ebony Reed of the Reynolds Journalism Institute on why, rather than be intimidated, journalists should feel uniquely suited to selling advertising.