On Monday, April 25th, Chapin High School’s journalism class took a trip to the University of South Carolina for the annual South Carolina Scholastic Press, or SCSPA, Conference. The conference was held in the Russell House and included different sessions for improving skills in writing stories, an election for next year’s student leaders of SCSPA,  and an awards ceremony for classes that applied for the competition.

The students had the opportunity to choose which sessions they wanted to attend. There were options such as “Editorial writing,” “Pimp my page & InDesign tricks,” “It’s lit: Creating a collaborative publication,” and “Linking to social media.”

The editor and chief of the Chapin Student Press Network, Jordan Lester, attended three sessions: “Caption queen”,  “Slam dunk sports packages”, and “We are family.”

Lester, when asked about his favorite session, said, “I enjoyed ‘Slam dunk sports packages’ because it was very interesting to see how Collin Taylor, a junior at USC, collaborated with sports illustrated to cover sports across the campus.”

Senior editor, Abby Collins, also attended three sessions: “Carolina journalism institute: where to be this summer”, “Slam dunk sports packages”, and “We are family.”

Collins said, “I enjoyed ‘We are family’ because it helped portray a sense of community that is needed in order to have a successful staff that can work together to create adequate news stories.”

During the awards ceremony, CSPN was awarded with an Honor Certificate for their online newspaper. Cspneagles.com was critiqued and the students were told ways they have succeeded and areas in which they can improve in.

Chapin’s journalism teacher, Maurice Thomas, enjoyed the tour and the conference and said, “I thought it was a great experience. This was the first conference I have attended since being at Chapin High School. It was great to see so many different publications and how different schools are covering their news. After attending the conference I think we will improve in our speed of reporting.”
All of the students in Chapin’s journalism class are ready to work hard to improve the CSPN website. The class enjoyed the trip and plans on attending the conference again next year.