By Allison Fitts
Day 2 of the high school journalism conference in Minneapolis was the beginning of most of the actual journalism festivities. The Dart and Teresian staffs attended workshops during the day, and later enjoyed a couple of bonding activities. Check out my recap of our day two activities:
9:13 a.m. My morning was filled with magnificent photos. I listened to two amazing photographers speak about their experiences in the field. One of the men, Andy Nelson, was especially interesting because he spoke specifically about taking pictures of disasters. His slideshow included images of tsunami destruction, refugees crossing borders and people rummaging through what was left of their belongings after the Joplin tornado. It was a very moving presentation.
1:08 p.m. After a quick boxed lunch on the bus, most girls from both staffs attended the key note address from Vadim Lavrusik, the Journalistic Program manager at Facebook. Although his speech wasn’t really about journalism, it was very interesting. He talked about features of Facebook that I hadn’t really used and some I didn’t even know about. From what I learned at this session, I can tell you that Facebook has a lot of cool stuff happening on the horizon.
4:32 p.m. Everyone’s last convention session of the day was their write-off competition. These competitions are a chance for student journalists from around the country to show off their skills to others. I took part in the newspaper news/feature photography contest. I enjoyed it as judges (including Mr. Thomas!) critiqued awesome photograph that people my age were producing. Unfortunately, due to the thousands of entries, my photos were not critiqued in front of everyone, but senior Trish Smith had a photo of hers shown on the huge projector screen!
7:15 p.m. For dinner, everyone from both staffs went to the Uptown Cafeteria. I know what you’re thinking; anything that has the word “cafeteria” should automatically be a place you don’t want to eat. Although I would say this rule rings true most of the time, it didn’t in this case. This modern and trendy restaurant was in a historic part of Minneapolis, so the atmosphere was great. The food was pretty good, too, except I questioned why they gave us mashed potatoes and gravy (with no utensils) as a shared appetizer.
10:59 p.m. The NSPA mixer is a tradition for us STA girls. Last year we dressed up as goth girls in our school skirts, but this year we wanted to mix it up. The solution: nerds in plaid skirts. We looked great (no surprise there), but to our horror, there were copycat publication staffs. We went from being the only costumed staff last year, to being nerds in a sea of goths. We’re always one step ahead though!
Stay tuned for a day 3 update tomorrow!
