This year Hawk Headlines Journalism had an amazing opportunity to attend the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s (CSPA) 100th conference. Six students experienced Columbia University and visited New York City for two days. Students attended seminars, and gained knowledge about the world of journalism and helped to improve the Hawk Headlines program as a whole. 

Journalist director, Jim Amato, describes his Columbia University experience as one he’ll never forget, as he has been going since 2007, and it was the 100th anniversary of the university. 

“Being a part of the centennial is very exciting,” Amato said. 

Senior journalist and Sports Editor Hannah Mudry talks about how she first got into journalism because of Gilmore Girls. 

“I wanted to be just like Rory Gilmore, and own my own newspaper,” Mudry said. 

Columbia was a special experience for Mudry because she was excited about connecting with other journalists who also were very passionate about journalism. Not only was it her senior year, but she loved meeting new people in the seminars and learning from other people in the seminars. 

Mudry loved to meet people with the same passion for journalism that she has had throughout her four years at Woodland, and that she continues to want to pursue in college.  

“Everybody {was} there for a reason,” Mudry said.

Senior Business Director, Ashley Mayfield talks about how it was her first overnight trip to Columbia. She voiced how it was very fun, and she enjoyed implementing things that she learned while at the conference back into the Hawk Headlines program. 

“It was very fun and insightful,” Mayfield said. “I learned how to edit my own papers better.” 

Mayfield’s favorite thing about the conference was being able to learn from other people with different sized journalism programs, and to see what things worked for them and what things didn’t. Mayfield also talked about her favorite seminar being Southern Storytelling. 

“It was very insightful, on how people from other places tell stories and articulate themselves. It was interesting to learn about the different skills that I could use to further prove or get across my points.”

Senior Photo Director, Kyle Egan talked about how this year was a special experience for her because the seminars were a lot better than the ones that she had seen in the past. 

“They were really knowledgeable presenters and there was a huge variety of things they were presented from career in journalism to specific projects they were doing in their own journalism programs,” Egan said. 

She also commented on her favorite seminar being Humans of your school. One of the presenters mentioned bringing a project from their publication, to doing something similar at your own school theirs was called Humans of New York. 

“Hawk Headlines was already doing {Humans of Region 16} but I adopted a form of it as my senior project,” Egan said. “So being able to go there and see how other schools were doing this and get ideas for how I could further improve was really insightful.”

Overall, many new ideas and implications have been brought back to the Hawk Headlines program in order to improve it.