By Ardhys De Leon, staff reporter
Imagine getting the opportunity to attend a conference at one of the best colleges in New York City and being able to network with students from all over the country. This is real in the case of student journalists who are able to go to Columbia University for three days and learn new reporting techniques.
Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) is the event that allows this to happen. CSPA program runs in march usually around the week of St. Patrick’s day from Wednesday to Friday. This year, it took place on Wednesday March 20th til Friday March 22.
“I wanted to come to this conference to learn more about journalism and how to make my publication better,” Doherty High School sophomore Laci Derhan said.
This conference had students from all over the nation, who came to represent their newspaper, yearbook, literary magazine and broadcast publications. The three days in the conference consisted of students attending classes their advisors assigned to them, all of which dealt with the student’s branch of interest in their publication.
“Coming to this conference helps because you get to see what other people are working on and you get to learn new techniques,” Oswego High School junior Brook Broadwell said.
In this school, students from broadcast, newspaper and yearbook are chosen based on how well they do in their publications classes. This criteria is made up by attendance, the amount of effort shown in the class and work completed. Teachers were only allowed to bring 7 students each day, therefore not all students were able to attend CSPA on all three days.
“Although I only attended the conference one day I still learned a lot in the legal aspect of journalism. Everyone is always talking about the freedom of the press and speech, but never acknowledge the restrictions that are placed on journalism. For example, I learned that if something is in the public domain it doesn’t need to be cited, but if you use even 5 seconds of a popular song you could get sued for copyright infringement,” junior Rita Cinquemani said
This year, like every year, CSPA brought something new from the journalism world to young students in every field of publications. The experience included learning new skills, networking between students and advisors as well as the opportunity to explore Columbia University.
“This was a great experience and I would highly recommend it because it helps with any publications and you can always learn new things,” Homestead High School junior Cameron Kwong said.
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