For the second year in a row, UW Student Media has sent some of its student employees to attend a series of conferences in New York City, New York for educational purposes ranging from writing and photography to layout and advertising.
The College Media Association, from March 7-11, held these conferences with multiple colleges from across the country in attendance. The students sent by Student Media were four in total: Branding Iron Visual Editor Will Wise; Branding Iron Writer Suweksha Shrestha; OneTV Broadcast Manager Brian Bessy; and, Frontiers Editor Courtney Kudera.
“I learned a lot about how to make student newspapers more professional,” Wise said. “It was nice to see other examples of student newspapers from around the country because a lot of the time it feels like we are all alone.”
The presentations were held by experts throughout the journalism world, as well as peer reviews on techniques for creating a better paper such as team building, feature writing, videography techniques and photography contests.
“As someone who is not a journalist by years of practice but as a videographer, I learned about many useful tools I will be incorporating into OneTV,” Bessy said. “I attended a few sessions on investigative journalism, copyright law and organization. I plan to thoroughly incorporate these.”
Other student newspapers from across the country shared techniques and displayed how similar struggles are faced throughout the country. One very important conference, entitled, “The Power of Words,” discussed the importance of word choice in regard to headlines and articles. Other topics that were crucial to the Branding Iron were how to utilize a minimalistic layout in order to make the largest impact and the importance of advertising to create your presence.
“I will share what I learned with others at Student Media for present and future publications,” Kudera said. “Particularly, elements of impactful, minimalist design layout in magazine publications.”
These conferences are extremely important because they encourage members of Student Media to continue learning and improving; to be the strong voice of the students at the University of Wyoming.
“‘Women Ruling the Media’ was the best workshop that I have ever attended in my life,” Shrestha said. “Don’t coat everything with honey and kindness because you are born to be a badass and don’t doubt yourself on that.”
