By Laura Homan
Warm air flows through the doors of the hotel as a continuous flow of people stream into the lobby to check into their rooms. The coffee-scented lobby is already scattered with college students and advisers on their laptops. In various seating areas near the café, they chat amongst themselves with energy and excitement. New arrivals receive a key to a hotel room, then members of the mass head to the elevators, travelling up two floors. There, each person is given a nametag for the rest of the weekend.

Each year an estimated 2,000 students and advisers from various colleges around the nation gather at the National College Media Convention, sponsored by the Associated Collegiate Press and College Media Advisers. These students are all leaders of various media at their colleges: newspapers, broadcast, radio, yearbooks, and magazines.

The conference is intended to share ideas and struggles among the students and advisers to make stronger and better-developed media products. Each year, colleges all across the nation respond by sending their student leaders to continue to improve the mass communications of their schools. The days are divided into time slots with a variety of sessions going on in each time period. The nearly 400 sessions are like classes, informing students of how to approach problems, develop résumés, and work together as leaders for their college media.

This past weekend, October 28 through November 1, I attended this conference in Austin, Texas, with Dr. Stephen Coyne, English department professor and faculty adviser for “The Kiosk,” to gather information and knowledge in order to help me take on the position of editor-in-chief of “The Kiosk” for the year.

“The Kiosk” is a literary magazine that has been printed by Morningside College nearly every year since 1938. The magazine is composed of poetry, short stories, and creative non-fiction written by Morningside students, faculty, and alumni. Also, the addition of artwork and photography from this group expanded the annual publication into a magazine of Morningside community expression.

In addition to the submissions, “The Kiosk” is developed by students. There is an editor-in-chief that works with all aspects of the publication–including leading a staff of other students, encouraging submissions, and the laying out of the magazine. This gives all of the students involved some real world experience in relation to publishing. Dr. Coyne works as the adviser, guiding the editor when necessary as well as offering advice and overseeing the entire project.

During my time at the conference, the leaders of the sessions placed a large emphasis on the changing media. Each type of media is doing its best to define itself in this ever-changing world. The Internet is causing a huge change in the way all types of media are viewed.

Newspapers are now showing video on websites, radio stations are placing web cameras in their studios, and broadcast stations are showing more of their episodes online. In response to this, session leaders recommended that students learn to work with each type of media while attending college in order to round themselves for potential future careers.

Advisers of college media, as well as professionals who had experience in real world situations with various media, led the sessions. These are people who had themselves been journalists and know the importance of educating the next generation to join the work world.

This year’s keynote speakers were Rich Boehne, the president and chief executive officer of E.W. Scripps Company, which owns and operates local and national media businesses; Steve Outing, a self-employed online journalist of various degrees as well as an adviser for the University of Colorado’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications; and John Burnett, an investigative journalist who has won numerous awards for his works.

In the sessions I attended, I gained tips on how to handle myself as a journalist, an editor, and as a person entering the work world at the end of this school year. Student editors of various media types offered advice to one another, listened to the counsel of session leaders, asked questions on how to handle issues, and exchanged ideas about building the number of people on staff, story ideas, and approaches to running their program. Professionals delivered information about what to include on résumés and how to behave in interviews. Also, colleges made presentations of their media so that others could learn from their mistakes and strengths while gaining ideas for their own publications.

In addition to the education the sessions and interactions with other college students in similar situations offer, the students form relationships with others from their own schools. The students and advisers form a bond discussing the ideas that each of them learns in sessions and discussions. Passing ideas back and forth and teaching one another is an incredible way to bring the staff of each type of media for a school together and functioning as a team. A unified team is the best thing for these student leaders to have.

This conference is an opportunity for every college to improve their mass communication media. Many colleges attend annually, giving the students the chance to continually expand and improve the media they lead. From my experience at this conference, I feel that any college with a newspaper, radio station, television program, yearbook, or magazine should send its student leaders and media advisers to this conference annually. It can only create improvements and, no matter how little or much these improvements are needed, the conference has something to offer its attendees. (Nov. 5)