Join the NPA Community

About our Community

The NPA Slack community now has 2,000+ members that include a combination of news product professionals, journalists, developers, technologists, data scientists, and other media-tech adjacent professionals from around the world and diverse backgrounds. The conversation is moderated by our team, and we host community-only year-round events.

The community is founded around the concept of Ask/Give: We welcome everyone joining our community to seek support and help, and also, to share, teach and give. We believe everyone, regardless of experience or job title, has a role in leading discussion and ultimately creating change in the industry. 

It’s free to join us on Slack. Just fill out an application and tell us about yourself.

What can you expect from NPA Slack?

• Inspiration and validation from other people working in news product

• Co-creation of best practices and practical advice for applying product management tools in a news organization

• Opportunities to grow your professional profile and sponsor others

• Discussions on how to diversify media leadership, promote inclusive decision-making and design for equity

• Room to learn from our failures together and celebrate each other's successes

Our most popular channels:

• #ask-and-give: A support channel to ask for help from the community and give back to others.

• #shop-talk: This space is for nerding out on tools, product strategy and more. Start a discussion here to find like-minds.

• #show-and-tell: A collaborative space to share and discuss resources, templates, training materials, demos, case studies — anything that we’ve created or learned from that might help someone else. 

• #article-club: Read something interesting lately? Join us for quality debate and discussion about the articles percolating in our feeds. 

• #virtual-coffee: Meet someone new! We’ve installed the Donut app into this channel. If you join, the app will pair you with someone else in the channel at random, so you can find time to connect.

Who can join the NPA Slack?

The NPA Slack is open to everyone who wants to be part of the news product community and commits to follow our code of conduct. Our application process ensures we’re fostering an inclusive environment and helps us learn more about how you’ll contribute to our Ask/Give culture — what you’ll bring to the community and hope to gain by participating. 

Our Slack membership criteria:

• You identify as a news product thinker or think you might be a news product thinker. We believe anyone working at the intersection of editorial, audience, technology, and business can be a product thinker, and you do not need a product job title to be a product thinker. In addition to product managers, our community includes editors, executives, data scientists, academics, and more.

• You work in journalism, a space that directly supports journalism, you’re a student or you’re looking to make a career move into the news industry. While this is a community for news professionals, we acknowledge there’s so much we can learn by inviting students and people from other industries to join this space. If you work outside the news industry, just let us know why you have a vested interest in joining this community.

• You are who you say you are. Our application includes a verification step that allows us to confirm you’re a real person.

• You agree to follow our code of conduct and help us build a safe and inclusive environment. Our community shares a common mission to produce accurate, quality information that serves the needs of our communities and increase diverse representation in media leadership, as it is key to building trust with our audiences and addressing systemic bias in journalism.

Who the NPA Slack is not for:

• Vendors who are seeking customers or information to improve your company’s services, such as technology or marketing. This is a community for career development and knowledge sharing, and our code of conduct prohibits soliciting members and collecting user data.

• People outside the journalism industry who want to share political opinions or weigh in on news product strategies or services.

• People who do not demonstrate a serious intent to follow our code of conduct and help us build an inclusive community.