New York City Museum School’s student publication, The Gallery, recently sent eight students to Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s 100th Annual Spring Conference, held on the campus of Columbia University. In an effort to represent the whole newspaper, staff members from every section were sent. Juniors Aoife Moriarty, Maya Soto, Geneva Mommaas, Sarah Chen, Isabella Cosinga and Naomi Richardson were in attendance as well as sophomores Cecile Jones and Norah Buckman.
The Gallery fundraises the whole year to bring improvements to the club and better the reader experience. The staff has made it an annual goal to send writers and editors to this prestigious journalism conference annually. Students from across the country attend the event, which runs for three days in mid March, and allows student journalists to learn from the very best and to be taught in the classrooms of an ivy league university.
As CSPA is held during the college spring break, there weren’t many students on campus. This way, CSPA attendees get the whole campus to themselves and get to place themselves in the shoes of a Columbia University student. Mommaas revealed that one of the reasons she wanted to attend CSPA was to “[experience] courses on a campus and to get somewhat of a college experience.” However, this was not the only perk of going to CSPA. Mommaas is a writer for the Opinions section on The Gallery and she reflected on how this conference “definitely inspired [her] to keep writing and gave [her] lots of new ideas for opinion articles.”
However daunting attending a journalism conference at one of the most prestigious universities in America must sound, seats at the table were not reserved for just the oldest and most senior members. Sophomore Cecile Jones was chosen to be a part of this year’s CSPA and she found it very insightful as well. Along with describing the experience as “amazing,” Jones also noted how “it gave [her] a lot of ideas as to what we can do to our paper to improve readership and make it more appealing to our school community.” The Gallery’s choice of participants in this year’s CSPA ensures that the information gathered there does not die with the juniors who will be swamped with non-newspaper related work next year and who will then leave for college.
Mommaas remarked on The Gallery’s plan to turnkey information by mentioning “a slideshow highlighting the major points of the different lectures [they] attended.” Mommaas also called attention to the fact that “[they] were all mostly from different sections so [they] can distribute the gained knowledge”. Jones touched on how CSPA “gave a lot of insight into what [they] can do for [their] newspaper.”
Besides it being a great intellectual experience, both attendees found CSPA to be a good personal experience too. Jones noticed how the other student journalists were “very committed” to their own papers. Mommaas found that other participants brought different and new perspectives and she highlighted how cool it was that “there were people from all over the US.”
Students at Museum School should consider applying to attend CSPA, an option which only becomes available once they are on The Gallery staff. The Columbia Scholastic Press Association has shown itself to be a great experience through the eyes of a regular student and a student journalist, and as Mommaas puts it, CSPA “ is definitely a treasure trove of information.”
