In early April Tupelo High School’s Wave Media staff attended its second National Scholastic Press Association Convention in Kansas City, Missouri.
The NSPA hosts semi-annual conferences to put student publications from around the country under the same roof so that everyone can learn from each other.
The largest sub-section of the convention is built from various learning sessions to allow speakers to teach students from around the country.
The focus of these sessions can vary and students are given multiple options to choose from, one session led by The Harker School’s Media team in San Jose, California focused on how they manage to profile nearly the entirety of their senior class.
“they’re just clear students of the game, they clearly have this passion for it, that they’re really putting into fruition, and they’re making good use of.” Wave Media copy editor Jevon Edwards said.
Another large part of the convention comes in the form of competition, students can compete against their peers in various on-site writing, photography, and design competitions
Edwards placed among the top 20% of students for the convention’s on-site editorial writing competition, an opportunity he prepared for the week prior in Oxford, Mississippi during the more local Mississippi Scholastic Press Association convention.
“When we went to MSPA, even though it was just one session, I made sure that I went to a session about opinion writing, because I knew that’s what I was going to be doing,” Edwards said.
Lillianna Walden, another member of Wave Media received an honorable mention in the Yearbook Sports Caption writing category.
Teams who attend the convention can also put the work of their publication against each other in best-of-show competitions, The THSCurrent placed 8th among all qualifying websites, the first time a product of Wave Media has been ranked nationally.
Simply being in an environment suited to people who are passionate about journalism can lead to improvement, especially when surrounded by students who are also trying to improve their own work.
Christian Montecino, a sports writer and podcast host for The Cougar Press located in Ventura, California, is one of the students the Wave Media team met while in KC who was trying to improve their publication’s podcast.
“I’m trying to pick up the podcast game in our school because it hasn’t happened in a couple of years.” Montecino Said
Montecino says he wants to use the convention as an opportunity to step up his sports writing and sports podcasting, two aspects of journalism Wave Media has also taken steps to improve recently.
One of the most important takeaways from the NSPA’s fall convention for the Wave Media team was learning to be a student-led publication and not to rely heavily on the class adviser.
“the biggest thing we took away was being student-led. Some of the best publications you see are kinda spearheaded by the students, and the advisor is just that, an advisor.” Edwards said.
Plans to go to Kansas City can be traced back to the Wave Media team’s trip to St. Louis in November of 2022 for the MSPA’s annual fall convention.
Following the team’s trip to St. Louis, Wave Media won the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association’s “Publication of the Year” honor for the first time since 2016, the team hopes to replicate those results for years to come.
