Business journals from across the U.S. gathered in Canada’s capital this week as the Ottawa Business Journal hosted the annual summer conference of the Alliance of Area Business Publishers.
From June 18-20, members of the AABP are swapping ideas and seeing the sights of the capital during the gathering, which is being held at Delta Hotels Ottawa City Centre.
The member business journals hail primarily from the United States, with one publication from Western Australia. OBJ is currently the only Canadian AABP member.
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It’s an interesting year for OBJ to be hosting the conference, said publisher Michael Curran.
“We won the bid in June 2024 and U.S.-Canada relations were different than they are now,” he said. “It’s remarkable to me that a lot of these people, in a time of fractious political environment, have decided to put all those differences aside and come to Canada — for almost everyone here — for the first time.”
According to Curran, it’s the first time the conference has been hosted in Canada in more than two decades when it was held in Vancouver. For OBJ staff, it’s an opportunity to connect and brainstorm with international peers.
“Success in media these days relies on really understanding the niche you’re in and having the latest ideas and challenges and solutions,” said Curran. “It is a big opportunity for the OBJ team to really understand what a business journal is and level up.”
OBJ editor-in-chief Anne Howland helped to organize the editorial sessions at the event and said this is her first time being involved with the AABP conference.
“It’s always interesting to meet other people who are experiencing the same ups and downs, the same challenges that you are,” she said.
The event features sessions that target topics relevant to both the journalism and sales sides of business publications. Howland said she is interested in how to marry the two sides of the business for the benefit of the entire publication.
“I think that’s where the industry has fallen apart a bit,” she said. “How do you bring those two sides together so that you maintain the integrity of the journalism and the value to the reader, but also have great sponsors and advertisers who want to step in and support what you’re doing? How do you internally bring the functions of sales and marketing together with editorial — two sides that have traditionally not worked closely for many reasons.”
After several years as a digital-first organization, Howland said OBJ is also planning to put more attention on print. At the conference, she said there will be opportunities to connect with other business journals that continue to excel in that medium.
“We’re thinking about how to keep a strong presence on our website, but how do we really move back to printed journalism products?” she said. “It’s maybe a bit counter to many newspapers and organizations these days, but we’re going to give it a shot. We’re really interested to learn from some of these amazing American publications that do it.”
Working alongside Howland on organizing the editorial track was Lesley Weidenbener, editor and assistant publisher of the Indianapolis Business Journal, who is attending her fifth AABP conference.
“Business journals are kind of niche publications,” she said. “We generally don’t compete with each other and therefore we can steal each other’s ideas. When you’re walking around here, you will hear people talking about the same things: forty under 40 (programs), power and influence lists, all these events. We come here and we talk to each other to figure out what’s working and then adopt a lot of the same projects.”
One topic dominating editorial discussions this year is no surprise to Weidenbener. Artificial intelligence, she said, is top of mind for journalists everywhere.
“I think journalists initially completely shied away from AI because we are not sure that we can trust it,” she said. “But the truth is, AI is being so incorporated into our everyday lives that we are using it. So one of the things we have to learn as journalists and editors is how to harness AI to be helpful, but in a completely trustworthy way.”
