PHOTO BY SABRINE BRISMEUR
BY SABRINE BRISMEUR
Though blaring pop music, flashing colored lights, and a pitch-black stadium may bring to mind the visual of a concert or club rather than a yearly journalism and broadcast workshop, that was exactly what CCHS journalism students walked into early Saturday morning at the Florida Scholastic Press Association District 7 convention. The assembly represented Broward, Palm Beach, and Martin counties.
FSPA 2016, hosted by Nova Southeastern University, commenced with an hour-long opening ceremony, in which three students competing for District 7 Representatives gave their speeches. Among the contestants for the position was Lariat print managing editor Kendyl Counts, who was later revealed as the winner. She will be traveling to Orlando in December in order to organize the FSPA State convention.
“Hearing my name called for district representative was an unforgettable moment,” Counts said. “I love this organization and am honored to represent it and have a hand in planning this year’s state convention.”
But the main intention of the convention was to provide journalist students and their advisors with forty workshop sessions to choose from. Students were able to attend four of these forty-five
minute workshops, which ranged from lessons on copy editing, to photography advice, to open-discussion sessions on the issues publications can run into. A journalism favorite, the Chicken Salad workshop, hosted by Michael Koretzky of the Society of the Professional journalists, showcased printed student publications before revamping them completely. Broadcast students preferred an animation workshop, while yearbook students took advantage of the various yearbook layout sessions.
“Besides competing, we went to different workshops and learned a lot about yearbook related topics like photojournalism and layout,” yearbook editor Stav Sharoni said. “I learned how to use my camera the right way, and I hope to use this strategies to make the yearbook photos look a lot better.”
Earlier in the month, the Florida Scholastic Press Association released their Fall Digital Contest list online. Consisting of broadcast, layout, photography, and articles, CCHS students submitted their entries in order to place at the convention. FSPA itself offered “On the spot” (OTS) competitions, in which students were given a prompt or topic immediately after the opening ceremony and had a strict time restriction in order to complete it.
Junior Casey Chapter, a member of broadcast publication Cowboy Television (CTV), competed in an OTS question-based prompt entitled “Man on the Street.” Competitors had two hours to collect, film, and edit responses from people at the convention to make a minute-and-a-half long video out of it.
“It’s really stressful, because you have such a short amount of time to do it when you’re usually used to having a whole week to do work on it,” Chapter said. “But ultimately it’s very awarding, and even though we didn’t place, it felt amazing to do.”
Overall, CCHS students reaped great success from the convention, taking home a total of seventeen awards from newspaper the Lariat, yearbook the Round Up, and broadcast CTV. Separately, newspaper and broadcast secured seven awards each, with yearbook receiving three. Among the categories were three first place awards from the Lariat, two from Round Up, and two from CTV.
“FSPA was a great place to collaborate with my team and make memorable experiences,” CTV vice president Lexi Delgado said. “I’m looking forward to going next year for sure.”
