On Nov. 17 – 20, the Newspaper and Yearbook classes from the North Kansas City School District attended the Fall National High School Journalism Convention, sponsored by the Journalism Education Association (JEA) and National Scholastic Press Association.
Last year, the convention was in Kansas City at Bartle Hall, but this year it was in Minneapolis, Minn.
Northtown, Oak Park, Winnetonka and Staley all rode a charter bus together.
The bus left Kansas City at 4:30 in the morning and reached Minneapolis at 1 p.m.
The ride home, however, took longer because a snow storm hit Minneapolis just as the bus was leaving.
Despite the long ride, senior newspaper editor Lauren Williams enjoyed the bus trip.
“It brought me closer to both of the staffs and although we were all tired, it was an amazing time and memory,” said Williams.
The JEA Conference had over 100 classes that covered everything from caption writing to how different design software can be used.
Each seminar was taught by a speaker and had anywhere from 50 students to over 200 depending on the subject.
Other conferences were held specifically for editors to talk to each other on how to improve publication quality and staff morale.
“My favorite class was the editors’ class, because I got a chance to relate with other editors and talk about problems. I’ve faced, and they would give me their opinion on how to solve the problems,” said senior yearbook editor Daniell Hernandez.
“I liked going to the advertising class because it gave me a lot of ideas,” said junior yearbook staff member Taylor Steen.
“I wanted to see how the other schools were covering the year; homecoming can be done a thousand different ways,” said sophomore Matthew Gutierrez.
Another large part of the conference was the competitions. Each staff member from Northtown participated in at least one competition.
There were several categories that staff members could participate in: caption writing, photography, carry-in design contests (competitors were given material to create before to bring in), and story writing.
Senior Armand Clemoens won an Honorable Mention award in his competition category, Yearbook Sports Caption and Story Writing.
“I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I won honorable mention. I wasn’t sure about how well I did,” Clemoens said.
The JEA conference also had activities for the attendees to participate in while in Minneapolis.
On Friday, Nov. 19, there was a dance that students could attend, and on Saturday, there was a screening of the musical “Newsies.”
Several students decided to check out the dance.
“When Armand and I first went, we were weird but became the life of the party,” said junior newspaper staff member Emily Anthony.
When students weren’t in classes or competitions, they walked in downtown Minneapolis to see the sights, and took a trip to the Mall of America.
“I loved making build-a-bears with my bear buddies Elizabeth and Lauren at the mall. I also loved watching “School of Rock,” playing Uno, and reading books about philosophy in the basement of a really cool old book store that we found,” said Anthony.
