Student Journalism @ Barton Community College

Nate Razafindable, Staff Reporter

 

Brotherly love, a well deserve name to this lovely city. This fall the city of Philadelphia held the National College Media Convention gathering up to 2000 journalism students from across the country. The main site was established at the Marriot Hotel Downtown Philadelphia.

 

The main site was well chosen for several reasons. The first reason was the accessibility, the downtown location was the center of all traffic. The second is food convenience, Downtown Philadelphia is the place were restaurants all kinds gravitate around from fast traditional food to luxury restaurants.

 

The conference organizers came up with refreshing and useful materials. Students were roaming all day, the Marriot started to look like a human size ant’s cave, with journalist ant students looking for sweets. Students could attend the Chicken Salad and the Problem Breaking workshop and grab a smoothie on the way.

 

The Chicken Salad was a vicious and very knowledgeable workshop. The so called Chicken Salad II: “Extreme makeover” could be described in a sentence as “Here is a newspaper, lets find everything wrong with it and blow it up!”  The first question asked by the presenter was, "is there any student from (this certain) university here?" Then he would start his massacre, a painful but rewarding massacre.

 

Besides all the formatting lessons from that workshop, it also showed students how to make school newspapers more Russian!

 

Students that are more interested into breaking the problems that a newspaper crew may run into about drugs and hot stories could attend the “Sex, Drugs and Rockin' the Reporting on Faith-Based Campuses.”  A workshop organized by three experienced advisors that would crack the solution out if there is one.

 

Here are some  awesome workshop titles:

“Crisis Communication: When S**t Hits the Fan”

“Revenge of the Journosaur”

“Double Session: Have You Got the Guts for This?”

 

The spirit adopted by the advisors and speakers reflected the vibrant spirit of the city. Journalism was on a pied d’estale, journalism students were made to feel comforatable and challenged.  It the training for Superman’s backup job.