PCM Journalism visits Fall Journalism Conference in Iowa City

The Journalism staff on the way to lunch in Iowa City. From left: Riley Graber, Stewart DeHart-Butters, Rylee Gallaher, Eleigh Davis, Jack Eighmey, Emma Hiebert, Lily Ladehoff, RaAnn Duinink and Gabe Graber.

This past Thursday, Oct. 20, the Journalism class went to the Iowa High School Press Association Conference (IHSPA) in Iowa City. At 8:45 a.m. the keynote speaker, Nixon Benitez, the Executive Editor at the Northern Iowan started. The event was separated into three sessions, the first one started at 9:30 a.m. and did not end until 10:30 a.m. The second session started at 10:40 a.m. and ended at 11:20 a.m. and the third session started 11:30 a.m. and finished at 12:10 p.m. With the completion of the third session that was the end for the PCM Journalism crew, but for other schools they went to lunch and went back to listen to another speaker. Ty Rushing was the closing speaker, he is the co-founder and president of the Iowa Association of Black Journalists and is the senior editor of Iowa Starting Line.

The Journalism staff split up for the sessions to get more information during the time we had there. The first session that I went to was called “What it Feels Like”, the speaker that presented this information was Patrick Johnson. He talked about his past career of being a Journalism teacher and how he taught his students to give the voiceless people in their community voices. The second session I participated in was, “How to use Tik Tok for Your Publication”, by Chris Snider from Drake University. We learned about the ways we need to use Tik Tok to find our niche for our journalism page. My group did not get into the third session we wanted to attend due to it being full.

A few of the other Journalism staff members shared what their favorite part of the IHSPA conference was.

“I enjoyed the first session the most because of the topic that was talked about. It made me realize that Journalism is not just about news,” stated Eleigh Davis.

“My favorite part of the day was the first session with Becy Phelps, in Benefits of Cross-Training in Journalism: Telling a story in more than one way.” shared Jack Eighmey.

“My favorite part of the trip was sleeping on the way home.” stated Riley Graber.

“I think that my favorite part of the conference was taking an amazing nap in the car on the way there.” RaeAnn Duinink said.