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Journalism conferences, conventions, meetups and online chats have become nothing more than an exercise in groupthink.

Rosters at conventions are filled with familiar names and those people sit on panels with their co-workers and friends.  Spaces that should be full of innovation and positive collaboration on the future of our industry are instead unimpressive and, for lack of a better word, boring. They’re boring because we let them be. They’re unimpressive because we’ve settled for more of the same-old same-old.

If we’re going to shake up this industry in a meaningful way, we can’t continue yelling into an echo chamber. We need to do better.

While members of the frequent slate of media thinkers are without a doubt, fantastic, they are not the only ones. There are many innovative, thoughtful journalists out there with an eye on the future.

And you won’t find many of them on the East or West coast.

The Midwest is not flyover country. And I’m tired of seeing so many great ideas, projects and people ignored.

Before I was a D.C.-based political journalist, I worked at a local news startup smack in the middle of America’s Heartland. My high school graduating class was smaller than the news organization I now work at.

The first time I went to Online News Association I was so excited to meet Emily Ingram, who now works at the Washington Post, because she was another girl from the middle of the country doing big things and getting recognized for it.

Meeting people like Emily – who truly makes me excited about the future of media – doesn’t happen frequently enough. More often, I’m stuck in rooms listening to speeches by people who don’t challenge me about ideas I’ve already heard before.

A lot of people will say I need to practice what I preach. You’re all right. One of my goals this year is to become more involved in the journalism community at large.

I’m worked with talented Minnesota journalist Emma Carew and a group of others on a project to increase media diversity. I plan to attend several conferences, including the Online News Association conference and BCNI Philly.

When the conversation gets dominated by the same voices repeatedly, I plan on being the one to speak up.  When there are insidery gatherings that are resistant to new opinions or ideas, I want to help them make a path.

But I can’t change the landscape of this conversation alone. Here’s my challenge to the big guns:

If you’re organizing a journalism event, picking a speaker for your next conference or panel or looking to profile a great thinker or do-er in media, ignore New York, San Francisco and Washington temporarily. Instead, take a look at Iowa City, Iowa; Lincoln, Nebraska or Lawrence, Kansas.

If you want to talk about the future of media, don’t take the easy way out and default to the loudest voices on Twitter or the groups that jump from coast-to-coast to attend conferences. Ignore the people who just pay lip-service to innovation and creativity. Pick the people who are actually doing something about it.

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