The Manitou Springs High School newspaper staff recently visited CU Boulder to attend Journalism day, or JDay for short. JDay was an amazing opportunity for the staff to learn more about our writing and photography allowing us to use what we learned to create better articles for MSHS.
CU Boulder shapes and encourages programs like these by holding JDay. JDay provides a palette of classes for students at all levels, including topics of broadcasting, journalism, writing, photography and layout. All of these could inspire a student to share their creation and encourage others to create with them.
While attending JDay, we noticed many schools in Colorado Springs who attended were only representing their yearbooks programs, not their journalism programs.
Strong journalism programs are very beneficial to students. Students learn how to create non-biased writing and are taught to not be victims of polarization. Journalism classes also give students a voice, opportunities to share their work and educate them on future jobs. School newspapers are beneficial to students outside of the journalism programs as well, educating them on events that concern them.
Students learning to be unbiased is a subject you will not commonly find in an English classroom. This topic is more centered around journalism. As journalists, we have to spread factual information. Learning to be unbiased allows you to share and create. Spreading unbiased and correct information is the nature of journalism. This is an essential skill and can help you find jobs that are relevant to journalism or communications.
Participating in a journalism program can educate students on future jobs. The set of skills we learn while in journalism class include reporting, broadcasting, editing and anchors as well as communication centered roles such as a social media manager.
Giving students a voice encourages them to learn more about journalism. Giving students a voice is a huge component in newspaper programs. This allows them to have creative freedom and share their thoughts through articles. Giving students the freedom to write for their school newspaper is important because they are able to write about the events concerning them and their peers.
Student led newspapers are essential to spread news to their school. Newspaper programs educate students with factual information and unbiased articles. Students should have somewhere to look for news concerning their school and town. This gives students a direct accurate and fast source to find information concerning them.
These learning opportunities can help uplift students looking into journalism as well as benefit the school as a whole. Covering breaking news, creating articles and developing a skill set to work with others, collaborate and share information is a learning experience I believe everyone should have.
I hope more schools can soon build their staff and aim to learn more about journalism. A way to accomplish this is representing your school’s journalism program at CU Boulder during J-day. Something I believe will encourage more students to join these journalism programs and also continue to help educate staff is the interactive lessons taught during J-day. As a student who is new to journalism this year, this all felt very encouraging. This helped keep me curious about journalism and made me want to continue.
