Saturday morning on October 27, the Florida Scholastic Press Association held its 46th annual South Florida Journalism Day convention at FIU. MLEC along with other schools such as Coral Gables, FIU Mast, Columbus, Ferguson, Felix Varela, Homestead were there, and so were many more.
The event began with three students from Stoneman Douglas High School, Rebecca Schneid, Zakari Kostzer, and Alexa Zarem. They shared their journalistic experience amidst the tragedy that occurred at their school, how they went about designing their newspaper, conducting interviews and creating a documentary to cover the loss of their friends and classmates in the most tasteful and respectful way without encroaching too far.
“There’s a balance between wanting to get a story done and invading people’s privacy,” says Shneid “You want to get the story done, but you want to get the story right,”
After the introductory speakers the convention rose into action with every journalist moving to different rooms with different ongoing activities ranging from on-the-spot writing contest to a full conference on learning advanced photography with professional photographers from Fox-Mar Studios.
Throughout the convention there were three sessions of conferences or contests, each session had its different list of conferences that one could attend and at the the end of the session the students would switch and go to their next preferred conference. They would repeat the same process for the third session.
No matter what area of journalism one had interest in there was a conference for it, photography, video production, broadcasting, yearbook spread, newspaper article and headline, writing tips and your rights as a journalist. Each one with its professional speaker who has had many years experience in the topic.
At the end of the event, all the schools met up back in the assembly room and waited anxiously for the announcement of the winners of all the competitions.With every award given, a roar of cheer erupted from the respective group. There was an abundance of competitions and competitors and so it ended almost an hour later than it should have.
In the sea of awards MLEC managed to achieve a couple, with Sabine Joseph receiving 2nd place for on-the-spot-creative writing and Michelle Mairena for on-the-spot news writing. As well as other honorable mentions for our yearbook in various different categories
Overall it was a great experience to not only enjoy oneself but to learn more about what is the art of journalism and how to become good at it.
