IHSPA Insider

By April Moss, IHSPA President-Elect and Convention Chair

Happy New Year fellow journalism advisers,

I know the weather outside has been frightful, but your IHSPA convention team has been busy planning some amazing speakers for the upcoming convention.

Besides keynote Chelsea Pimienta (click for bio), there are approximately 30 sessions for your students to attend. Featured speakers will include: Mitch Eden, Lisa Renze, Chad Corrothers, Gavin Clavio, Ellen Austin, Rich Nye and Mike Colver. These speakers offer expertise on a wide range of topics, including censorship, enterprise journalism, multimedia coverage, podcasting, sports reporting, careers in videography, and leadership.

Besides the speakers, the IHSPA is trying to encourage middle school programs to become involved. Katie Hollis from Franklin Community Middle School has made great strides in this area. She will be offering a session geared towards middle school programs. First, though, we need to get middle advisers to attend the convention. If there is a middle school program that feeds into yours, please reach out and invite the adviser to the convention so they can learn more. It has the potential to grow many programs in Indiana.

With less than a month away, make sure you have registered for the convention. Use THIS LINK. The time is now.

Now is the time for your top high school journalists to put together their Journalist of the Year portfolios and applications (Indiana applications are due Feb. 10). The Indiana JOY competition standards and rubric are based on the national JEA competition. The JEA website features resources students can use to prepare their state-level entry, including help videos for each of the portfolio categories and examples of past winners.

In the second episode of the IHSPA student board podcast, student journalists (Ryan, Connor and Ryan) meet with IHSPA executive board member Chris Gloff to discuss things they wish they knew before studying journalism, how to prepare to study journalism in college and stories they're excited to cover this semester. This podcast is created by and for high school student journalists, so please share with yours!

The Journal, the award-winning newsmag from Southport High School recently published the story "Reading Between the Languages" in Spanish in their print December issue, while linking to an English-version of the same story on their website. The story, written by reporter Samantha Juarez, is a great example of not only diversifying coverage but also expanding the reach of your publication.

Here's more from adviser Mike Klopfenstein about his editors' decision making process:

Our school is really diverse and getting more so every year. For several years, we ran an article every issue in a language other than English (Spanish, one of the Burmese dialects, even Arabic when we briefly had a girl on staff who was fluent). These articles were written and translated by kids on our staff in an attempt to offer something in The Journal to as many of Southport's students as possible. A few years ago, the leaders on the staff decided to stop running the non-English article and start a new Culture section that would offer articles in English highlighting the diversity at our school.

In November at the national convention in Philadelphia, our top editors made the decision to bring the non-English article back. The Journal has a big staff this year that includes Spanish speakers, Burmese dialect speakers and even another Arabic speaker, and our leaders felt that it was, once again, a great opportunity to help the Journal appeal to students who otherwise might not pick it up.