Student journalists to attend Chicago conference

Eight journalism students and one parent chaperone are attending the Journalism Education Association and National Student Press Association conference in Chicago from Nov. 1-5.

One of the students attending, Social Media Editor Cale Chapman, will be attending his fifth conference. Chapman, a senior, will be able to pick classes to attend while at the conference.

“There’s all kinds of breakouts and it all depends on what you’re interested in,” Chapman said about the classes the students will take. “But there’s a lot of really good beginner classes; they’re like newspaper and yearbook boot camps.”

The students going have to pay a fee of $730. The trip technically counts as a field trip so they don’t get excused from any work that is assigned during the trip.

“They can earn some extra money by selling extra ads, for the most part, it’s a pay-to-go trip,” Journalism Advisor Becky Tate said. “They have to make up their work, it’s not like a free pass. The smart ones do it before they go.”

The students will stay in a hotel in Chicago. JEA secures the rooms for the student to rent.

“They have a contract with the hotel for a certain number of rooms, and they don’t rent out of the entire hotel,” Tate said.

In order to go on the trip, the students have to tell Tate during spring so she can start looking for plane tickets.

“The students give me a deposit in the spring, they start selling tickets in the summer and I can get a good group rate,” Tate said.

There will be over 6,000 students from all over the country attending.