Members of the school newspaper and yearbook staffs recently attended an annual media organization conference in Orlando, Florida. Held between Oct. 29 and Nov. 3, the purpose of the convention was to educate students who work in the media about putting out good publications.
While at the session, members from both The Chronicle and The Brave attended educational workshops that taught the writers efficiency and how to get a newspaper and other publications out to the public. Other workshops offered leadership skills, conflict resoultion and advertising ideas.
This year a total of eight students attended the convention – five from The Chronicle and two from the yearbook.
Even though the convention was open to all students who take part in either student media organization, the students who actually went are in leadership positions.
“Viktoria [Sundqvist] and Lauren [O’Leary] chose the members and chose those in leadership positions. Also, they chose those who would get a lot out of it and would be around for a while,” said Melinda Sutton, assistant director of the Carl Hansen Student Center and Student Leadership Development, who also attended the conference.
Free time was offered as well. When the crew was released from their educational studies they enjoyed the sites Orlando had to offer.
“We had fun when we got out of the sessions early. We went to Disney World and the Epcot Center,” said Sutton.
Schools from all over the country attended the conference. Sutton said it was a great networking tool and that the members who attended seemed to get a lot out of it.
The Media Convention was funded by the Student Government.
“Every organization has one conference per year to choose from. They’ve gone in the past and it has been successful, so we chose to fund them again,” said Vagelis Perdikouris, the vice president of Finance for the Student Government Association.
Sutton added that it seemed as though the convention was geared more towards print publications, which is why Q30 and WQAQ did not attend.